Belcan continues to acquire in the UK
Belcan made its second acquisition in the UK, since it was taken over by PE AE Industrial Partners. The acquired firm is Sitec, through its two units Sitec Design and Sitec Recruitment.
Sitec Design provides product design services to the aeronautics industry, while Sitec Recruitment serves the aerospace, nuclear, defense and petrochemical industries. Sitec is headquartered close to Bristol.
The foundation of Belcan in the UK lies with Applied Technology Consultants (ATC), which provides staffing services. We estimate the revenues of Belcan Engineering Services UK, as ATC is now named, to $50m.
In July 2018, Belcan acquired Cheltenham-based Omega Engineering Services. Omega is a testing specialist serving the aerospace and manufacturing industries, and also a developer of control equipment. Omega had 80 FTEs and revenues of around USD 8m (estimate).
With the Sitec acquisition, Belcan is reinforcing both its legacy ATC and its recent Omega acquisition.
AE Industrial Partners is in a build-up mode with Belcan, and is executing fast on its M&A strategy. If Belcan were publicly-listed, we would have questioned the strategic intent of developing into the staffing market, a low-margin market. But Belcan is privately-owned and the purpose of gaining scale goes beyond industry wisdom. We have seen that happening when Assystem Technology, under the ownership of PE Ardian, acquired a software testing service specialist, miles away from its core ER&D service market serving the aerospace and automotive industries.