A short piece in Friday's Evening Standard about sausage skins caught my eye over breakfast today. It seems that a German company called Saria want to buy a Scottish sausage skin maker called Devro at a valuation of £667 million. A rounded version of the (Biblical) magic number 666.6666... which is a bit odd. Does Saria include a clique of numerologists on its senior management team? More seriously, how can sausage skin manufacture be such a big business. Surely it is a misprint?
Investigation suggests not. Reference 1 reports an annual turnover of £250 million. A large factory in China. A world leader in the business of sausage casings - quite possibly the manufacturer of the cases of the Bastides saucisson sec that we ate yesterday, on which more in due course. Quite possibly the manufacturer of the casings of the sausages I buy from Poland. Headquartered in a village called Moodiesburn on the outskirts of Glasgow - this last being a place where I imagine they consume a lot of sausage of one sort or another.
While reference 3 confirms that the company is indeed likely to be sold for £667 million or 316.1p a share - a substantial lift from the 175.0p or so that it had been running at before: Saria must want to do this very badly. In any event, not a misprint. But at least I now know slightly more about the sausage casing industry than I did this time yesterday.
References
Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devro.
Reference 2: https://www.devro.com/.
Reference 3: https://www.devro.com/investors/recommended-offer-for-devro/.
Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/02/steam-rising.html. An earlier excursion with Bastides.
Reference 5: https://saria.com/. The rather glossy website of the buyer. With one of the many facets of the business being snapped above.
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