Molins Offloads Arista Business To Montrose Affiliate

LONDON (Alliance News) - Engineering and services company Molins PLC on Monday said it has entered into a deal with an affiliate of air quality and environmental laboratory services company Montrose Environmental Group Inc to sell part of its Arista Laboratories Inc business for USD0.5 million.

The Arista assets will be sold to Enthalpy Analytical Inc, an affiliate of Montrose, and are being sold following the strategic review that Molins completed in February.

Arista posted operating losses of GBP2 million in the year to the end of December, on revenue of GBP2.5 million. Molins expects to book a GBP3.5 million loss on the sale.

Molins said trading in the remainder of its Scientific Services division remains more challenging than had been expected, particularly due to tough conditions in the tobacco sector. Molins' Packaging arm continues to trade ahead year-on-year, the company said.

Molins said that with Arista to be treated as a discontinued operation in its 2015 results, it expects its underlying performance to be slightly ahead of its current expectations.

Shares in Molins were up 0.2% to 88.70 pence on Monday morning.

By Sam Unsted; samunsted@alliancenews.com; @SamUAtAlliance

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