Exova has paid £22 million for furniture, timber and building products testing business BM Trada.

The deal sees Edinburgh based Exova, which specialises in testing and certification across multiple industries, add around 340 staff across 16 countries to its workforce.

BM, which has its head office in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, also provides certification, inspection and training. It has customers in around 70 countries.

Exova said eight of those locations, including Japan, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Argentina and Indonesia, are new markets for it.

According to its most recently available accounts at Companies House BM had a turnover of £23.5m in 2014 and made a pre-tax profit of almost £571,000.

Ian El-Mokadem, chief executive, said: "The acquisition of BM TRADA reinforces our commitment to extend the range of services we offer to our clients and the geographic reach of our business."

John Willox, managing director of building products and certification at Exova, said: "The acquisition of BM Trada extends our existing certification services, creating a truly global offering and broadening our support to customers in new growth sectors and markets worldwide.

"The acquisition also expands our range of building products testing and extends our global reach into eight new countries."

The deal came as Exova outlined a 3.4 per cent increase in organic revenue during the first four months of this year.

Total revenue was up 4.7 per cent boosted by its previous acquisition activity which has seen it complete a number of deals since its stock market flotation in April last year.

It highlighted organic growth across aerospace and health sciences in Europe but warned there had been some contraction in its oil and gas and industrials division.

It added: "However demand for our long cycle, [capital spending] driven testing services remains healthy."

Organic revenue in the Americas was flat with growth in aerospace and oil and gas offset by declines in other sectors.

Exova said it has seen contract wins across all its clusters in the rest of the world and has "a good pipeline of future opportunities".

The company said it expects to deliver modest underlying organic growth across the rest of the year.

The company expects to deliver modest underlying organic growth across the rest of the year but will now beat a previous forecast of a three per cent revenue hike from acquisitions.