PARIS, (Reuters) – Steinhoff has offered to buy most of Cauval’s bedding business for 76.2 million euros ($86.4 million), up from an initial offer for half of the French firm’s bedding factories, the South African retailer said on Tuesday.
Loss-making Cauval, owner of the Treca, Simmons and Dunlopillo brands, was placed into receivership in February and a court in Meaux, east of Paris, will review competing bids from Steinhoff and other companies on May 17.
Steinhoff is proposing to buy five of Cauval’s six bedding factories after initially offering to buy three. The new offer means 971 jobs will be saved, rather than 771, and another 300 should be created over the next five years, the company said.
The South African company has been on an acquisition spree in a bid to move capital out of a deteriorating home market and into safer assets in Europe, where it already makes more than two-thirds of its 9.8 billion euros of annual sales.
Last month, its French furniture and household goods division Conforama offered $975 million for Darty, Europe’s third largest electrical goods retailer, trumping a competing bid from French retailer Fnac.
Steinhoff was also in the race to buy the Argos retail chain in the United Kingdom but pulled out last month.
Steinhoff is proposing to keep Cauval’s Saint Amand, Limay and Mantes-la-Jolie, Mer, Fougeres, and Reichshoffen plants. It said it could help with the redevelopment of the Bar-sur-Aube site which employs over 400 people, and which it would not keep.
This could include “financial support for the projects that may be proposed by other buyers”, the statement said.
Cauval, which also makes furniture, employs 1,800 people in total.
