Boskalis Acquires Top German Dredging Company
Royal Boskalis Westminster has reached a heads of agreement with Strabag SE for the acquisition of the dredging activities and assets of Strabag Wasserbau GmbH, formerly known as Möbius Wasserbau.
Strabag Wasserbau, based in Hamburg, is the market leader in the German dredging sector. The company has an annual turnover of approximately EUR 50 million ($54 million) with a broad array of equipment. The agreed transaction price is EUR 70 million ($76 million) , does not include any goodwill and will be financed from the company's own cash flow.
The transaction is limited to acquiring the equipment, personnel plus a couple of maintenance contracts. The most important assets are two young shallow draft trailing suction hopper dredgers with a capacity of 7,350m3 each, a large modern backhoe dredger and four self-propelled barges. The technical specifications of the hoppers makes them very attractive for port maintenance, coastal and beach replenishments projects.
Through this acquisition, Boskalis strengthens its home market position in Germany. Furthermore, by acquiring the hopper dredgers, the requirement to renew part of the Boskalis dredging fleet in the 6,000m3 to 9,000m3 space will be fulfilled.
In view of this acquisition and the current market conditions, Boskalis will be taking a number of aging hoppers, cutters and backhoe dredgers out of service in the course of this year.
The transaction is expected to be closed in the first quarter of 2016.
In announcing the company’s third quarter results in November 2015, Boskalis said its results were again good after an exceptionally strong first half of the year. The revenue was at a high level as a result of a strong hopper fleet utilization that even exceeded the level achieved in the first half of the year, with the large trailing suction hopper dredgers nearly fully utilized.
After a fully utilized cutter fleet in the first half of the year, part of the fleet was idle for scheduled maintenance. The results and margins of ongoing projects were good across the board.
In the third quarter projects were taken on in the Netherlands (Marker Wadden, Markermeerdijken, IJmuiden sea lock), the Middle East and Central and South America, among other places.
Due in part to the completion of the Suez Canal project the order book fell around three percent compared to mid-2015.