Bühler Announces Going Private Agreement

Bühler Industries, the manufacturer of the Versatile and Farm King brands of equipment, announced this week an amalgamation agreement with ASKO, the majority share owner of the Bühler, and a wholly-owned subsidiary of ASKO, Newco, to take the Canadian company private.

I caught up with the president of Bühler here at the show to find out how the move will benefit the company.

"So, the decision is taken because we need to, let's say, make prompt decision in order to make heavier investment into our factory to modernize our production technologies, together with the vehicle we're developing. And this will help us and give more freedom to take decision in that direction. And that, let's say, moving back from the stock exchange will give us a lot of advantages. And there will be no changes in our, let's say, sales and marketing strategy. So, we will keep our dealer network as is, and give it more stronger support out of our investment into the company."  

"So, we are, let's say, planning to make that investment in production activities in North America as much as possible. That's the reason why we are investing our Winnipeg factory for Versatile, and also in modern factory for Farm King. So, both factories are invested with the new production tooling like laser cutting machines, welding robots, press, etc, and it will give larger and bigger production capability to us, capacity to us, together with the input quality of the product."  

"And this is the one investment area that we are doing at the moment. And the other is we are developing new product which is planned to be launched very soon with the new Versatile faces."

Watch the full version of this episode of On The Record