Thyssen (GB) bought by Meade Corporation

The German mining and tunnelling group Thyssen Schachtbau has sold its £60m-a-year turnover UK construction business to the Meade Corporation. There will be no job losses.

Keith Jessup, who continues as managing director of Thyssen (Great Britain), said that there will be a name change. "It was a condition of the sale," Jessup pointed out this week. The new name is yet to be chosen.

The parent company decided that UK construction was no longer a core business area. It invited third party offers and investigated the possibility of a management buy-out but that option failed to materialise.

Almost two-thirds of Thyssen (GB)'s turnover comes from civil engineering contacts, the average size being £1.5m. The largest current project runs to £10m. Other areas of work include building, geotechnical, concrete repairs and trenchless technology.

This year's turnover is expected to generate a profit of £1m. It is a national player with a headquarters in Pontefract, Yorkshire and further offices in Bangor (covering north Wales), Swansea and Stoke-on-Trent.

The new owner is the Meade Corporation. Based in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, it has a wide range of subsidiaries covering insulated power cables, masts and bracings for football stadia as well as crane manufacture. Meade made the steel superstructure of the new Hungerford Bridge in London and is supplying the overhead electric wires for the modernisation of the West Coast Main Line.

Meade plans to make Thyssen (GB) its main driver for its expansion into the construction sector in the UK.