Fidelium Partners sells ALUnited to the Chinese company APALT

Munich/Vienna — MP Corpo­rate Finance, a leading inter­na­tio­nal M&A advi­sory firm specia­li­zing in the Euro­pean indus­trial sector, has exclu­si­vely advi­sed Fide­lium Part­ners on the sale of its port­fo­lio company ALUni­ted. The buyer of the majo­rity stake in ALUni­ted — consis­ting of ALUni­ted A/S (Denmark) and ALUni­ted SAS (France) — is the Chinese listed company APALT (SZSE:002540). With this acqui­si­tion, APALT, a leading manu­fac­tu­rer of light­weight alumi­num compon­ents, makes its first tran­sac­tion outside the Chinese home market and achie­ves an important mile­stone in its global expan­sion strategy. 

With around 225 employees at its two plants in France and Denmark, ALUni­ted produ­ces struc­tu­ral alumi­num parts. A parti­cu­lar focus is on the extru­sion and further proces­sing of profiles for premium OEMs. Since Novem­ber 2021, ALUni­ted has been part of the port­fo­lio of Fide­lium Part­ners, an inter­na­tio­nal private equity firm head­quar­te­red in Munich, as part of a carve-out. ALUni­ted most recently gene­ra­ted sales of around EUR 70 million. 

Market entry into the Euro­pean premium auto­mo­tive segment

With its tech­no­lo­gi­cal specia­liza­tion and estab­lished market posi­tion in Denmark and France, ALUni­ted repres­ents an attrac­tive plat­form for APAL­T’s market entry in Europe. APALT is regarded as one of the leading verti­cally inte­gra­ted manu­fac­tu­r­ers of alumi­num compon­ents for the global auto­mo­tive, rail­road, buil­ding tech­no­logy and indus­trial sectors. With state-of-the-art produc­tion capa­ci­ties at a total of three loca­ti­ons in China, APALT is pursuing a clear growth stra­tegy: the acqui­si­tion of ALUni­ted marks a stra­te­gi­cally important step towards ancho­ring itself in the Euro­pean value chain, parti­cu­larly with regard to premium vehicle manu­fac­tu­r­ers. APALT employs around 3,600 people and most recently gene­ra­ted annual sales of around EUR 920 million. 

Cross-border tran­sac­tion in the wake of global indus­trial shifts

The take­over of ALUni­ted by APALT is an exam­ple of the incre­asing inter­de­pen­dence between Euro­pean indus­trial compa­nies and Asian market play­ers, as Robert Aigner-Lütter­­felds, Mana­ging Part­ner at MP, knows. “New OEMs from China are ente­ring the Euro­pean market at high speed, putting estab­lished value crea­tion struc­tures under pres­sure. At the same time, many Euro­pean suppli­ers are facing key trans­for­ma­tion tasks. In this envi­ron­ment, inter­na­tio­nal stra­te­gic part­ner­ships are beco­ming incre­asingly important,” explains the expert for the metal­wor­king (auto­mo­tive) indus­try in Europe. 

Accor­ding to Aigner-Lütter­­felds, Chinese play­ers are speci­fi­cally looking for Euro­pean plat­forms in order to build up produc­tion capa­ci­ties closer to the OEMs based here: “The merger of APALT and ALUni­ted fits seam­lessly into this deve­lo­p­ment and under­lines how cross-border M&A between Europe and Asia is incre­asingly influen­cing conso­li­da­tion in the auto­mo­tive supply industry.

The acqui­si­tion marks the seventh successful tran­sac­tion for MP Corpo­rate Finan­ce’s auto­mo­tive deal team in the past twelve months. The experts are made up of specia­li­zed sub-sector teams for the auto­mo­tive indus­try in the areas of metal, plas­tics and elec­tro­nics. “In addi­tion to the current market uncer­tain­ties in the Euro­pean auto­mo­tive indus­try, the special features of this deal were above all the cultu­ral diffe­ren­ces between the Chinese buyer and the Euro­pean target. Here it was important to create the basis for a trus­ting deal through trans­pa­rency, a focus on detail and many years of expe­ri­ence in the indus­try,” comm­ents Robert Aigner-Lütterfelds. 

Domi­nik Beck, foun­der and Mana­ging Direc­tor of Fide­lium Part­ners, adds: “We are grateful for MP’s conti­nuous support throug­hout the entire tran­sac­tion process. The profes­sio­na­lism and commit­ment, but also the expe­ri­ence of the entire team in support­ing complex, inter­na­tio­nal tran­sac­tions contri­bu­ted signi­fi­cantly to the successful conclusion.”

About MP Corpo­rate Finance

MP Corpo­rate Finance is the leading inter­na­tio­nal M&A consul­tancy specia­li­zing in the indus­trial sector. As an expe­ri­en­ced part­ner, MP supports medium-sized compa­nies and manage­ment teams, private equity decis­­ion-makers as well as entre­pre­neu­rial confi­dants in complex tran­sac­tions on both the sell and buy side and provi­des support in the context of capi­tal procu­re­ment, buy-and-build stra­te­gies, carve-outs or throug­hout the entire private equity life­cy­cle. MP was foun­ded in Vienna in the 1990s by Roman Göd and Gregor Nischer as the first Euro­pean M&A firm with a sector-focu­­sed advi­sory approach. Today, the company employs more than 85 expe­ri­en­ced hands-on experts at five loca­ti­ons world­wide — in Vienna, Frank­furt, London, Istan­bul and Chicago — making it the largest indus­trial M&A team in Europe. With its unique sector focus, MP has successfully advi­sed on more than 700 indus­trial tran­sac­tions invol­ving invest­ment compa­nies, SMEs and corpo­ra­ti­ons. — www.mp-corporatefinance.com