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Buyout fails at Tasker

17th December 1987
Page 12
Page 12, 17th December 1987 — Buyout fails at Tasker
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

• A management buy-out at Craven Tasker, the up-for-sale semi-trailer manufacturer, has been thwarted, according to industry sources.

The managers' package is understood to have been rejected by owner John Brown, and an outside buyer for the company (acquired by the Trafalgar House Group subsidiary only last year) now looks likely to be announced early in 1988.

Peter Martin, a finance manager with Kleinwort Benson, which is handling the sale for John Brown, says there has been "a number of expressions of interest".

The John Brown-owned PSV body maker, East Lancashire Coach Builders, is also up for sale and is in a "similar situation" with several prospective buyers being considered, says Martin.

John Brown has already said road transport is "not a major business area" within its group activities, and it has been anxious to sell the two companies for several months. Sheffield-based Craven Tasker, the third biggest trailer builder in the UK, with plants at Garstang, Woodville and Cumbernauld, has been profitable since 1983, and has orders worth 27.5 million, says its managing director Norman Mellors. A management buyout was suggested earlier this year as Tasker's most likely future survival option. Uncertainty, however, about its future appears not to have affected recent sales. Foods group United Biscuits is buying seven 12-metre CT semitrailers to add to the 20 it has already bought in 1987. All the trailers display the KP livery.

Photo equipment group Kodak is also taking delivery of 36 curtain-sided CT trailers, which will operate at 38 tonnes. They will operate with ERF tractive units and are painted in the Kodak livery.

The trailers have been built to specification, with air suspension and double-thickness floors for fork truck loading.


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