Owens Group, 80 per cent owned by Mainfreight and 12 per cent owned by Toll Holdings, said today it planned to sell assets to Sea Containers Australia Ltd (Seaco) for $12.5 million.
The assets include:
* Owens' Australian and New Zealand temperature controlled container service business owned by Owens Refrigerated Freight, for
$4.5 million
* Owens Container Services' New Zealand quality container management business, for $1.38 million
* an Australian quality container management and container depot businesses, Quality Container Management, for $2.05 million
* Owens' Australian specialist road tanker cleaning and cleaning business for $3.13 million
* Melbourne Container Park Pty for $1.0 million
* a half share in container refrigeration repair company Independent Reefer Service for $400,000.
In a related transaction, Owens said Owens Container Services would purchase from Sea Containers British Isles, the 26 per cent of shares in Westfield Container Depot that OCS does not already own. Westfield operates a container depot business in New Zealand for the repair and storage of containers. The proposed price is $1 million.
Owens has applied to the NZX for a waiver of rules requiring shareholders' approval for the transactions. It said corporate valuer Grant Samuel had undertaken an arms' length process for the sale of the relevant assets with the goal of obtaining the highest value available for the relevant businesses.
"To that end, all identified interested parties were contacted and invited to participate in the sales process," Owens said.
"Based on the number of potential bidders contacted in relation to each asset, the extensive nature of the sales processes for each of the businesses to be sold, and the fact that the highest value bidder was selected in each case to be the purchaser, in Grant Samuel's opinion the selected bids represent the fair market values for each of the businesses."
Owens shares closed on Friday at $1.06 and were untraded today by late afternoon.
- NZPA
