SAI Global Limited (SAI) today announced the acquisition of FoodCheck Limited, a leading UK provider of assurance services in the food sector. Headquartered in Northampton, England, Foodcheck has a team of highly qualified professionals across the UK focussing predominantly on the retail, hospitality and public service sectors. FoodCheck employs an advanced audit management technology that provides value adding services to many organisations, particularly the large UK food retailers.
Commenting on the acquisition, the Chief Executive Officer of SAI Global Limited, Mr Tony Scotton, said “the food retailing and hospitality sectors remain attractive growth sectors for SAI and FoodCheck has emerged as a preferred supplier of assurance services through its proven technology solution”. He added “this acquisition is consistent with our intent of seeking out assets that possess proprietary intellectual property that enhance our services and market position in key markets. The business has grown revenue and profit strongly over the last three years”. The Managing Director of FoodCheck, Mr John Robinson said ”FoodCheck’s strategy relies on providing a high quality, customer focused, assurance service and in leveraging its audit management technology to deliver real-time, dynamic and flexible reporting.”. He added ”becoming part of SAI Global will allow us to continue with our customer focussed strategies by having access to SAI Global’s strong brand in the food industry, and its broad international network”.
This acquisition enhances SAI Global in two important ways - continuing to strengthen SAI Global’s profile in the UK and European food assurance sector, and providing an opportunity to leverage FoodCheck’s technology solution to better service SAI’s global assurance client base. Funded from cash reserves, the consideration consists of an initial payment of GBP£2.7M, plus deferred consideration of up to GBP£1.3M which becomes payable on the achievement of FY11 and FY12 profit targets.
SAI Global provides organizations around the world with information services and solutions for managing risk, achieving compliance and driving business improvement. SAI Global provides aggregated access services to standards, handbooks, legislative and property publications; and audits, certifies and registers your product, system or supply chain. SAI Global facilitates good governance and awareness of compliance, ethics and policy issues and provides training and improvement solutions to help individuals and organizations succeed. FoodCheck is one of the UK’s leading providers of audit services, encompassing the auditing of company, regulatory and brand compliance to some of the biggest names in the retail, hospitality and public sectors. FoodCheck delivers independent audit programmes for clients via a UK-wide team of trained auditors using its Audit Manager technology.
www.saiglobal.com
www.foodcheck.net
