Frutarom Industries Ltd. (Haifa, Israel) has acquired Oxford Chemicals Ltd. for about $12 million. The deal is expected to be completed in several weeks. The purchase is expected to enhance Frutarom's fine ingredients holdings (with emphasis on natural flavor applications) and customer base, in addition to R&D, production, marketing and sales activities. Oxford's 2007 sales were about $14 million. An official company statement noted that Frutarom "continues working to identify and implement additional strategic acquisitions of companies and activities."
Of the acquisition, Frutarom president and CEO Ori Yehudai said, "The acquisition of Oxford continues the implementation of Frutarom's rapid growth strategy, and further supports Frutarom's position, which is already one of the ten largest companies in the world in the flavors field. Frutarom will act immediately to integrate Oxford's activity with that of Frutarom's fine ingredients division while realizing and utilizing the extensive commercial and operational synergy that exists between Frutarom's operations and Oxford's operations in order to take maximum advantage of the cross-selling opportunities and achieving maximum cost savings."
