April 7 (SeeNews) - Bulgarian battery manufacturer Monbat [BUL:MONB] said it has completed the acquisition of a 60% stake in Tunisian Company of Batteries NOUR for 10.3 million euro ($11.2 million).
The acquisition was primarily financed by using the unutilised part of the proceeds from bond issues emitted in 2018 on the Sofia bourse and with own funds, Monbat said in a bourse filing on Wednesday.
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By doubling the production in Tunisia to 1 million lead-acid starter batteries per year, Monbat will seek to mitigate the risks of volatile energy prices. Additionally, the optimal workload in Batteries Nour and the realisation of the export potential in Europe, Middle East and Central Africa will further neutralise the adverse effect on Monbat from traditional business seasonality driven by the European markets.
Italian engineering company STC, part of Monbat group, and French firm Dross Engineering along with other leading players active in the battery recycling segment have been contracted to work on the deployment of a brand-new facility for recycling of used lead-acid batteries in Tunisia.
The value of this investment is in the range of 4.5 million euro. The facility is expected to become operational by the second quarter of 2023, Monbat said.
Monbat's production sites in Bulgaria's Montana and Dobrich will fully retain their current capacity. The inclusion of the new capacity is expected to lead to improvement of delivery time.
As at 14:20 CET on Thursday, shares in Monbat traded flat at 5.60 levs on the Bulgarian Stock Exchange (BSE), bourse data showed.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)