Schönberg, Germany-headquartered Sesotec GmbH, an optical sorting equipment manufacturer, has sold its Argelato, Bologna, Italy-based ASM Advanced Sorting Machines subsidiary (premises pictured above) to the Elica Group, a Bulgarian manufacturer of equipment for sunflower seed hulling, grain cleaning, seed treatment, and bulk material processing. The purchase agreement, transferring 100% of the company’s shares, was signed on October 5 and is expected to be finalized by the end of this year.
With the sale of its Italian unit, Sesotec takes another step in the direction of concentrating on its core business of foreign object detection in the food and plastics industries, and material sorting and analysis in the recycling sector.
Offering more than three decades of experience in developing and manufacturing optical sorting systems for seeds, ASM is a strategic fit for Elica, a company with which it had already been collaborating for over twelve years. In 2019, the two companies made joint appearances at two international trade shows, sharing booths at the INDAGRA in Bucharest and the CSS & Seed Expo in Chicago.
“The implementation of our growth strategy involves focusing on the areas in which we have over 40 years of expertise and a position of market leadership. Our core business has the potential to rise to some of the major challenges of our time, offering cutting-edge technological innovations that win value for people, the environment, and industry,” said Sesotec CEO Marc Setzen regarding the ASM divestiture. “True to our value proposition, we remain committed to offering intelligent technologies and services for foreign object detection, material sorting, and analysis in order to help our customers design safe, efficient, and compliant production processes.”
Though the two companies will no longer be acting as parent and subsidiary, Sesotec and ASM will remain linked. A cooperation agreement is in discussion that would designate ASM as the distributor of Sesotec’s foreign object detection devices for the food and plastics industries in the Italian market.
