COUNTY Tyrone fertiliser maker Westland Horticulture spent more than £13 million last year to acquire plant food and compost company William Sinclair at Ellesmere Port in Cheshire and save most of the 280 jobs.
Details of the deal are contained in accounts filed at Companies House by Westland, which itself employs 250 people in Dungannon.
Westland - which was reporting its results for an eight-month period to last August - confirmed that it bought the trade and specific assets of the Aim-listed company in July 2015 in a pre-pack deal for a total consideration of £13,500,005, of which £12.1m was in cash.
William Sinclair, which sells J Arthur Bower's compost and Deadfast weed killer brands and was horticulture supplier to B&Q and Tesco, is in the same sector at Westland, and the directors said they believed the deal represented a good fit.
During its reporting period Westland's recorded bottom-line profit came in at £4,094,933 (compared to £4,903,384 in the whole of 2014).
It came on sales of £96.6m (2014: £106.4m), and after the cost of sales was removed, gross profit was more than £25m.
Total shareholder funds at the end of the period was £24.9m.
The directors said they considered the results "satisfactory" and believe that there are still opportunities for growth as new lines are introduced to the growing fertilizer market.
Total employee numbers at August 2015 were 426,the report said, made up of 190 staff in production, 139 in sales and 97 in administration.
The firm's total wages bill for the eight months was just over £13m.
Just before Westland closed its books last year it said it was creating 70 high-paid jobs in an expansion plan worth £9.6 million, backed by £1.5m from Invest NI.
The firm has built a new manufacturing plant at Dungannon Business Park and is also buying new machinery and equipment.
At the time joint managing directors Edward Conroy and Robert Lavery, who purchased additional land from Invest NI to build their new plant, described the expansion as "an immensely important strategic investment that will enable us to grow our market share in the consumer lawn care market and control our innovation pipeline".
They said: "The new and very sophisticated plant enables us to bring the manufacture of some fertilisers in-house. It will enable us to respond faster to market opportunities in Britain, Ireland and other European markets that we have identified as offering significant growth potential in both short and medium terms," he said.
Westland Horticulture also has a presence in both the German and Polish markets and intend to focus further resources on both and other neighbouring regions.
