IMES Group, a Scottish engineering group, has bought a crane inspection company and an industrial weighing specialist.
The crane inspection company is Buchan Inspection Services (BIS), which was bought from its founder and owner Graham Douglas in December 2000.
This deal, worth in excess of £500,000 ($700,000) for BIS in a mixture of cash now and profit sharing in the future, maintains Douglas as managing director of the business. BIS specialises in offshore cranes and is active in the North Sea.
The weighing company is Davy Weighing Systems (DWS) which was bought from Kvaerner.
DWS was formed 40 years ago and was one of the first companies to offer large capacity strain gauge load cells for industrial applications. Today it designs, supplies and services process weighing and control systems and force measurement systems and equipment.
BIS and DWS will remain independent companies within the IMES Group.
The two acquisitions take the IMES Group’s annual turnover close to £8m ($12m) and the number of employees to more than110, doubling the staff in the last three years.
Founded in 1985 by Melfort Campbell, the Imes Group describes itself as a broad-based health and safety engineering company providing specialist services and equipment in the oil industry, power generation, shipping and general industries. It says it is a market leader in load, strain and stress monitoring, measurement and data gathering. Companies in the group include Water Weights, which uses water-filled bags to conduct load tests.
