NEWRY-founded global domestic appliance group Glen Dimplex is to sell off its Morphy Richards home appliances brand division to a stock market-listed company in China.
The deal, which is subject to approval from the Chinese government, is likely to be worth up to €200 million to Dublin-listed Glen Dimplex, which was originally set up in Newry by Martin Naughton in 1973 and is now run by his family.
Morphy Richards, which was acquired by Glen Dimplex in the mid-80s, sells toasters, kettles and a range of other home appliances to markets in Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and China, and its worldwide retail sales are estimated to be more than €350 million.
According to the Irish Times, the Morphy Richards brand is being bought by Guangdong Xinbao Electrical Appliance Holdings (Xinbao), which trades under the brand Donlim.
Xinbao, which already manufactures Morphy Richards products in China for Glen Dimplex, is buying the brand globally, but initially it will take full control only of the Chinese and British operations.
Glen Dimplex, the paper reports, will keep rights to distribute the brand under licence in Ireland, Australia and New Zealand for at least 10 years.
The group's chief executive Fergal Leamy and executive chairman Fergal Naughton are understood to have been working with Donlim/Xinbao for the last two years on a plan to further develop the Morphy Richards brand in China, which is its biggest market.
The deal is understood not to have any impact on Glen Dimplex’s workforce in Ireland, but it could affect a small portion of staff in Britain, where the Morphy Richards unit employs 80 people.
Glen Dimplex, which is the world's largest electric heating maker, trades in Northern Ireland as Glen Electric.
It was founded by industrialist Martin Naughton and four colleagues in 1973, initially manufacturing oil-filled radiators, and with the acquisition of Dimplex in 1977, a company eight times Glen?s size, and a brand leader in electric heating, the ambition of the young Glen Dimplex management team was confirmed.
In its last set of published accounts, up to September 2020, Glen Electric posted a £36 million loss on reduced sales of £659m, with the early impact of Covid having impacted the business badly (cost cutting measures saw the group’s workforce cut by almost 300 to 3,799).
Most of the group’s sales, just over half-a-billion pounds in the last reporting period, were derived from within the EU.
The financial figures for that year revealed that the group spent £17.2m into restructuring, most of it in Germany, and pumped £21.1m into R&D. Another £2.3m went to The Naughton Foundation, an educational charity named for the company’s founder.
