Capital Safety aims high in £150m sale

CAPITAL Safety, which designs and manufactures safety harness equipment for venues such as Wimbledon's Number One Court and Glyndebourne Opera House, is up for sale at about £150m.

Private equity group Electra Partners, which backed the management buyout of the company in 1998, has appointed adviser Close Brothers to manage the sale.

Capital Safety, of Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, was formed through the combination of three main businesses - Sinco, Protecta and Sala. The company offers products ranging from harnesses for people who work at great heights to abseiling equipment for the armed forces.

Sinco, which started out as a family-owned business in 1898, made nets for the New England fishing industry. Today, the Connecticut company provides safety nets and other specialist industrial products to the construction sector.

Protecta was founded in 1956 in Nice as a manufacturer of belts to protect workers from falls. It now exports its safety harness equipment to more than 70 countries and has operations in Spain, Poland, Hong Kong, Germany, America and Britain.

The Sala Group was formed from two of the biggest global names in height safety - DB Industries of North America and Barrow Hepburn Sale of Europe. Sala has an extensive international network stretching from Bristol to Hong Kong.