The manufacturing and engineering supply chains are having a bit of a moment. You only have to look at the broader industrial landscape—with Jaguar Land Rover potentially facing battery supply hold-ups following factory changes at Agratas, or on a more positive note, a helicopter manufacturer securing a crucial £27m contract to supply essential spares for Apache and Chinook fleets—to see that domestic resilience is the name of the game right now. Against this rather turbulent backdrop, the Devon-based engineering group Expromet Technologies has quietly but decisively snapped up Tiverton Fabrications for an undisclosed sum.
It’s a move that makes a lot of sense if you track Expromet’s trajectory over the last decade. They’ve already got Romsey-based Haworth Castings sorting out sand and gravity die casting, Investacast handling investment and pressure die casting down in Devon, and Somerset’s Metaltech Precision heading up the CNC machining front. Bringing Tiverton Fabrications into the fold essentially plugs a gap, broadening their UK footprint and allowing them to offer a full suite of casting, machining, welding, and assembly all under one roof. Tiverton itself has been knocking about since 1983, carving out a solid global reputation for precision welded tubes and cylinders, particularly across the cryogenic, pump, and medical sectors.
Rob Guest, Expromet’s chief executive, reckons the buyout is a natural extension of their current capabilities, making it vastly easier for clients to source complex, high-quality components from concept straight through to finished assembly. Tiverton’s production director, Noel Sugden, echoed the sentiment, banking on Expromet’s financial clout and technical expertise to scale up their operations whilst maintaining the bespoke, personal service their existing clients rely on to navigate demanding supply chains.
The Continental Power Play
But whilst domestic consolidation is shoring up the UK’s precision engineering base, the real heavy hitting is happening over on the continent in the green energy sector. US solar and energy tech giant Nextpower has just inked an agreement to swallow up Germany’s Zimmermann PV-Steel Group. We’re talking a whopping €330 million package here, split between cash and shares, aimed squarely at dominating the European solar market.
Zimmermann isn’t exactly a small fry. Founded way back in 1950 and pivoting heavily into the solar market around 2009, they’ve rolled out mounting structures for over 2,500 projects, equating to a staggering 20 gigawatts of installed capacity across 58 countries. For Nextpower, this acquisition is a massive land grab. It bolsters their portfolio with four new product lines—fixed mounting systems, carports, floating PV, and the increasingly vital agri-photovoltaics. Plus, it hands the US firm the keys to 15 new national distribution channels and a baked-in European client base.
The financial logic behind the move is hard to argue with. Nextpower is banking on this buyout pumping an extra €300 million into their annual revenue stream, alongside an adjusted EBITDA of roughly €45 million. The long-term plan is to leverage Zimmermann’s existing footprint to cross-sell Nextpower’s own kit—think single-axis trackers, electrical balance-of-system (eBOS) components, and high-capacity battery energy storage systems.
Given that fixed PV setups still account for about half of the European market (a trend particularly sticky in Germany, France, and Poland, according to S&P Global data), Nextpower’s strategy is pretty clear-cut. Assuming the regulators don’t throw a spanner in the works, the deal should cross the line in the latter half of the 2027 financial year, with the German outfit continuing to trade under the banner of ‘Zimmermann PV, a Nextpower Company’.