Victoria offloads Turkish tile business Graniser

(Sharecast News) - Flooring manufacturer Victoria announced on Tuesday that it has disposed of its Turkish ceramic tile manufacturing business Graniser for €36.8m. Graniser, based in Izmir, has been sold to Hasan Akgün, part of the family-owned Akgün Group, which operates across construction materials, automotive, insurance, logistics and oil sectors in Turkey and overseas.

Victoria said that Graniser, which contributed £30.1m to group revenues in the most recent financial year, has faced a "difficult demand environment" recently and has been negatively impacted by "instability in several of its key markets".

The company said that sale would contribute towards the deleveraging of its balance sheet by reducing leverage by approximately 0.5 times.

"Victoria's original investment case for the acquisition of Graniser was the diversification of the group's ceramic tiles manufacturing footprint into a lower energy, labour, and raw material price environment. With the long-term manufactured-cost supply agreement this thesis remains wholly intact with the sale of the business - but with the advantage of freeing up capital for deployment elsewhere in the balance sheet," Victoria said in a statement.