Emerson Completes Chloride Acquisition

Emerson has completed its $1.5 billion acquisition of UK-based critical power vendor Chloride Group PLC, the company announced today. Emerson (EMR) said the acquisition will boost the growth of its solutions for uninterruptible power supply (UPS) equipment and other data center products. The company already has a strong foothold in the data center with its product brands within Emerson Network Power, which include Liebert, Avocent, Energy Systems, Knürr, ASCO and Aperture.

"We’re excited today about the opportunities and options now open to our customers with the addition of the Chloride business," said Ed Feeney, Emerson executive vice president and business leader of Emerson Network Power. "Chloride is a great company, with a leading European position and strong industrial sector relationships. This complements everything we do."

UPS Market Expansion
Demand for UPS gear and other power continuity equipment is being driven by rapid growth in data traffic. "As managing a data center’s IT and physical infrastructure becomes more complex and critical, customers today must have at their disposal complete, integrated power solutions to enable true Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) and gain increased availability and energy efficiency," Feeney said.

Peter Loconto, the president of Network Power’s Energy Systems business, has been named to lead the new Emerson Network Power European organization. Reporting to Loconto will be the Emerson Network Power divisions in Europe, as well as the newly acquired Chloride business, which will be led by Tim Cobbold, currently Chloride’s chief executive.

"Service has been an essential strength of Chloride and we can assure customers that they will continue to get the same great quality and high levels of support and service that they received from Chloride," Loconto said.

Growth Through Acquisitions
In recent years, Emerson has made a number of strategic acquisitions. Last year Emerson acquired Avocent Corporation, which added leading IT infrastructure management capabilities to its data center offerings.

"Emerson is positioning itself in a significant way to support communications and computing infrastructure needs," Feeney said. "These are key, faster-growing markets that provide long-term future growth opportunities."

Chloride employs over 2,500 people across 23 countries, including more than 400 employees in the UK. The business has assembly and test facilities in Italy, France, U.S. and India in addition to R&D facilities in India, Germany and Italy and a manufacturing joint venture in China.