Coats, the world’s leading industrial thread manufacturer, has acquired Gotex, a Spanish based company which designs and manufactures high performance fibres, yarns and tapes used in the telecommunications, energy and oil and gas sectors. Coats has acquired 100% of Gotex which becomes part of Coats Speciality with immediate effect.

Gotex’s unique fibreglass coating technology and products will complement Coats’ existing coated aramid product range. There is much synergy between the product offerings and together, the companies will be able to provide an enhanced range of products to the fibre optics cable industry. The acquisition reinforces Coats’ strategy of expanding into value added engineered yarns.

Gotex is headquartered near Barcelona, Spain and has approximately 60 employees. It has three main categories of products:

·         Technical yarns – yarns transformed via unique and proprietary coating technologies, used in the cable industry to reinforce, insulate and protect optical fibres.

·         Technical woven tapes – woven high technical fibres, such as fibreglass, aramid or carbon used to protect cables from impacts, rodents, etc and in composites.

·         Product trading – buying and selling additional products that cannot be manufactured in-house eg mica tapes, FRP rods, plastic films.

Its core customer base is fibre optic cable manufacturers, although oil and gas flexible pipe producers and high tech sports equipment manufacturers are also growing areas.

Paul Forman, Group Chief Executive, Coats, said: ‘Gotex is an exciting first acquisition for our Speciality business that is fully aligned with our growth strategy; a global market leader in developing and producing innovative, high performance materials that complement our exisiting product portfolio.  It is an ideal fit with our Speciality business.’

David Ferré, Managing Director, Gotex, said: ‘This offers great opportunity both for Gotex and our customers.  It provides a way to accelerate our business growth and further develop our brand through significantly enhanced market strength and opportunity, as well as prospects for product collaboration with a global market leader.’

The acquisition of Gotex follows the highly successful acquisition of GSD Corporate Ltd in May 2015 and also, more recently, Fast React Systems in May 2016.  These three deals show Coats’ intent to grow via M&A in Speciality and Services, two areas of strategic priority.

ENDS