Diversey, a portfolio company of Bain Capital Private Equity, has reached an agreement to acquire Zenith Hygiene Group, a UK-based manufacturer of cleaning and hygiene chemicals. The closing of this transaction is expected by the end of the first quarter of 2018.
Zenith Hygiene manufactures a range of products serving customers in the healthcare, food service, hospitality, leisure and facilities management, pharmaceutical, and food and beverage processing industries. The company has more than 500 employees and had net sales in FY 2017 of £67 million ($75 million).
Zenith Hygiene was founded by Ringo Francis in 1996 and went public in 2005. In 2008 the company was taken private in a management buyout led by Chairman Lord Stanley Fink and CEO Ringo Francis. The company is headquartered near London in Welham Green, UK (www.zhgplc.com).
Bain Capital completed the $3.2 billion acquisition of the Diversey Care division and the food hygiene and cleaning business within its Food Care division from Sealed Air in September 2017. The acquired company – now called Diversey – is a provider of cleaning and hygiene products to the institutional marketplace, serving lodging, food service, retail, healthcare, food and beverage companies, as well as building service contractors worldwide. The company was founded in Chicago in 1923 and was acquired in October 2011 by Sealed Air for $4.3 billion. Net sales in FY2016 were approximately $2.6 billion and the company has more than 8,600 employees (www.diversey.com).
“I am excited by the opportunity to build Diversey’s local scale in the UK and Ireland with the acquisition of Zenith Hygiene” said Dr. Ilham Kadri, President and Chief Executive Officer of Diversey. “This combination, with the backing of Bain Capital, would create significant scale and help us serve a broader base of customers in key markets around the world.”
Bain Capital Private Equity was founded in 1984 and invests in the consumer and retail; financial and business services; healthcare; industrials; and technology, media and telecommunications sectors. The firm has a team of approximately 220 investment professionals and has offices in Boston, New York, London, Munich, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sydney and Tokyo (www.baincapitalprivateequity.com).
“We are committed to growing Diversey’s geographic reach and the addition of Zenith Hygiene would be a first valuable step towards creating a world-class provider of cleaning and hygiene solutions,” said Michel Plantevin, a Managing Director of Bain Capital Private Equity.
“We are excited to join Diversey and be part of a group benefiting from Bain Capital’s integrated global platform and bold growth plans for Diversey,” said Ringo Francis, CEO of Zenith Hygiene. “During the past 20 years, we have successfully grown the business by developing a comprehensive product offering in the UK and Ireland. We believe that all customers will benefit from the combination of both companies’ innovations and application expertise.”
© 2017 Private Equity Professional | October 10, 2017
