In June 2002 Novaterra Holding BV comprised nine foundry, forge and machining companies. It had also entered into strategic alliances with nine geographically dispersed companies in similar fields. It provided customers, typically manufacturers of capital equipment serving the “off-highway” market, with a broad pallet of manufacturing resources and services. It had revenues of ¿105.3m and an EBITDA of ¿7.1m. Fr¿ric Guinot, President, aspired to achieve group revenues of ¿250m. To do this the potential of the group to serve global customers had to be realized. Currently it was viewed as a regional supplier with specific strengths in Europe. Luitpoldh¿tte and FMGC were representative of companies within the Novaterra group. Luitpoldh¿tte, a 40,000 tonnes/year foundry produced gray iron castings in the 100-1000 kg. range while FMGC was a 80,000 tonnes/year foundry producing counterweights in the 400 kg. – 20 tonnes range. Both companies served predominantly the regional requirements of global customers. To grow both regionally and internationally they were actively considering a number of market development options. These included the provision of downstream services, subcontracting, product line/market expansion and locating manufacturing capacity, for example, in China.
