Portmeirion buys collapsed AromaWorks brand for £0.44m

The AIM-traded firm said AromaWorks makes a range of home fragrance products using essential oils in the health and wellbeing category, with a retailer customer base in the UK and the United States.

It said the total consideration of £0.44m for the intellectual property, inventory and certain fixed assets was payable in cash, and was financed from its existing cash resources.

For the year ended 31 December, AromaWorks had unaudited sales of £4.1m and a headline profit before tax of £0.3m.

The company said the acquisition would add further scale to its existing home fragrance business, Wax Lyrical, adding that it expected to deliver on cost synergies and cross-selling opportunities within the first 12 months.

“We are delighted to bring AromaWorks London into our family of brands - it has established an impressive base of UK and US customers in the last few years and is highly synergistic with our existing home fragrance business, Wax Lyrical,” said chief executive officer Mike Raybould.

“We have invested significantly in the last two years in our UK manufacturing and testing facilities and this gives us a great opportunity to further leverage both our production capabilities and our global sales infrastructure as part of our strategy to grow our sales alongside improving the group operating margins over the next three years.

“AromaWorks has successfully opened its first US market customer account listings in the past six months and we look forward to supporting and enabling growth in that key market through our existing US sales and distribution operation.”

At 1022 BST, shares in Portmeirion Group were up 1.99% at 410.49p.

Reporting by Josh White at Sharecast.com.