Case Study Hüttenwerke Königsbronn GmbH – Current Value Appraisal & Arrangement of Leasing Financing

Current Value Appraisal & Arrangement of Leasing Financing for a Steel Foundry

Hüttenwerke Königsbronn GmbH (until 2019 SHW Casting Technologies GmbH & Co. KG) emerged from the foundry segment of Schwäbische Hüttenwerke, whose origins date back to 1365. Today, SHW Casting Technologies consists of the plants in Wasseralfingen and Königsbronn.

The Aalen-Wasseralfingen plant only produces hand-moulded cast parts, primarily large engine housings, with a unit weight of up to 100 t. The Königsbronn plant, the oldest production site in Germany, has specialized in the production of paper calender rolls. The roller bodies are manufactured using permanent mold casting. In mechanical processing, the workpieces are then processed ready for installation on 35 large machines.

In October 2017, insolvency proceedings were opened over the assets of SHW Casting Technologies GmbH & Co. KG at Aalen District Court.

In the course of negotiations over the sale of the company, Lueders & Partner GmbH, with the assistance of financing consultants Financial Projects S GmbH from Mülheim an der Ruhr, was commissioned by the potential investor, Rheinische Mittelstandsbeteiligungs GmbH (RMB), in January 2018 to carry out a current value appraisal of the mobile assets of the SHW production facility in Königsbronn. In August 2018, Lueders & Partner was also commissioned to prepare the current value appraisal for the SHW production facility in Aalen-Wasseralfingen.

Although the takeover by RMB ultimately did not materialize in the end, the company was finally sold in April 2019 with the participation of Frank Günther and Wolf Waschkuhn of the Munich-based restructuring consultancy One Square Advisors to Avir Walze Holding GmbH, whose holding company Hüttenwerke Königsbronn GmbH thus became the new owner of SHW HPCT.

The new smelting works under the management of the managing director Dr. Heiko Hesemann will in future focus on the areas of manufacture and service of (die-cast) rollers. In the course of the takeover, around half of SHW’s employees were also able to move to Hüttenwerke Königsbronn and will also participate in the future value development of the company with a third of the shares.

Financing solutions for SHW’s mobile assets were sought to optimally structure the M&A process. In cooperation with our network partner Nürnberger Leasing GmbH, we were then able to provide a tailor-made solution in the form of leasing financing. This sale-and-lease-back financing solution was then supplemented by NIV Leasing GmbH from Hamburg.

In this way, a solid continuation solution was found and implemented for the benefit of the company and a large part of its employees.