Unitech Industries today announced that it has acquired the assets of catering and refrigeration specialist Valera, including its sales information, customer database, service records, telephone numbers and website, as well as its entire stock of spare parts. Unitech has also purchased an agreement between Valera and Sanyo that secures the provision of spare parts for Sanyo microwaves for a period of seven years.
In the same statement it revealed that a new business, Corsair Wholesale Ltd incorporating Valera, headed up by Pratap Gadhvi, would start operating from Corsair Engineering's two acre site in Banbury where it will have its own dedicated office and warehouse facilities.
The bulk of Valera’s key suppliers have agreed to support the new venture and so the net effect is that, although technically a fresh start-up, the new company will have a strong and familiar portfolio of industry-leading products in its armoury, ready to meet the needs of the many customers who have been awaiting a resolution after Valera went into administration in mid-October.
Speaking after the announcement, Unitech Industries’ CEO Nick Imlah said: ‘Having succeeded in concluding this deal in the face of strong competition from other interested parties, we see this as a great opportunity to re-launch one of the foodservice sector’s most respected brands. Corsair Engineering was Unitech Industries' first investment in a distributor-focused company and manufactures a broad range of kitchen fabrications and hot food trolleys and has now developed into a prominent turn-key supplier of kitchen extract and ventilation systems to the distributor market. Arun Sahajpal, MD of Corsair Engineering feels it’s a great strategic alliance and that the Valera and Corsair sales teams will work hand in hand across their over-lapping and non-competing customer base.’
'This is an exciting step forward for Valera and we look forward to being part of the hugely successful Unitech Industries Group,’ said Pratap Gadhvi. ‘It is our intention to affiliate the new business with the main trade associations including CEDA, CEDABOND and the FCSI at the earliest opportunity and I would also like to take this opportunity to thank our suppliers and distributors for their support during this period of change.’
