Eaton buys South African industrial equipment manufacturer
Eaton Corp. (ETN) Cleveland, plans acquire ACTOM (Pty) Ltd.'s low-voltage electrical business in South Africa. ACTOM's low-voltage business is a leading South African manufacturer and supplier of motor control components, engineered electrical distribution systems and uninterruptible power supply systems. Headquartered in Johannesburg, ACTOM's low-voltage business had sales of $58 million during the last twelve months. The business has 480 employees and two manufacturing facilities in South Africa.
“The acquisition of ACTOM's low-voltage business establishes a direct presence for Eaton in the attractive South African market and serves as a platform for growth in the region,” said Frank Campbell, president of Eaton's Europe, Middle East and Africa Region for the Electrical Sector. “The combination of Eaton's business with ACTOM's low-voltage business will offer a broader set of power distribution and power quality solutions that enable our customers to more effectively grow and compete in their markets.”
ACTOM (Pty) Ltd. is a leading manufacturer and distributor of electrical equipment in South Africa, employing approximately 6,000 people and having an annual order intake in excess of 5 billion rand (approximately ($750.7 million).
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Jim Lucy Blog
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Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 30 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling, Electrical Marketing newsletter and CEE News. During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement. Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling magazine and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 20 years.