“Gunnebo had been knocking on our door for a long time asking us to distribute their system,” says Charles Gillespie, Certex sales and marketing director. “Eventually they came up with an offer which was too good to turn down. We went to Crosby with that offer and they could not match it, so we made the decision to move across.”
The parent company of Crosby, Bridon and Forge France, the UK-based firm FKI, broke up the international Certex business in a series of management buy-outs, country by country, in 2004 and 2005. Certex is now owned by three former managers.
Certex UK will continue to sell Crosby’s lines of wire rope fittings, and other non-chain products. Crosby has some 200 distributors in the UK, he added.
“Our turnover has gone up in last couple of years with Crosby. Taking out the chain system was not a massive amount of what we bought from them,” he added.
Certex has bought out distributor RopeTek in Caerphilly, south Wales, for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition doubles the firm’s exposure to a local market dominated by heavy industry, including a Corus integrated steel mill.
Michael Gough, Managing Director of Gunnebo Industries UK (left) with Charles Gillespie, Certex’s Sales and Marketing Director Gunnebo hooks Certex UK
