NIBE Industrier AB has, in accordance with previous plans, acuqired the remaining 24% of shares in the Russian company, CJSC EVAN, located in Nizhny Novgorod, 400 kilometres East of Moscow. As a result of this transaction, EVAN is now a wholly owned subsidiary of NIBE and forms part of the NIBE Energy Systems business area.
NIBE acquired an initial stake in EVAN in 2007, followed by further tranches of 26% and 24% in 2008 and 2009 respectively.
Evan has 150 employees. Annual sales are equivalent to approximately SEK 120 million (EUR 13.3million), with an operating margin of just over 20%. The company was established in 1996.
EVAN is a market leader in Russia for electric boilers and large electric water heaters. Thanks to a well-established network of more than 100 distributors with close links to the company, EVAN reaches the entire Russian market.
"From a strategic point of view, making serious inroads into a large and expanding Russian market is absolutely the right move for NIBE Energy Systems to make," says Gerteric Lindquist, CEO of the NIBE Group.
"Since we first took a stake in EVAN, the company has also started to sell NIBE heat pumps on the ever expanding and increasingly attractive Russian market."