AGA Rangemaster ‘performing well’ after Middleby acquisition

American food prep and food service specialist Middleby has revealed that the performance of AGA Rangemaster is on track after it acquired the business a year ago for £130 million.

Speaking exclusively to kbbreview, about the integration of the AGA Rangemaster business into Middleby, head of sales and marketing, Mark Davison (pictured) said that the business had “performed well” across the first three quarters of the year and results are on track moving into quarter four, its “peak selling season”.

“The integration of AGA Rangemaster has gone very well,” Davison said. “Obviously, under Middleby, we have had to develop new approaches, new plans, new strategies for all of the brands [AGA, Rangemaster, Mercury, Falcon, Leisure] because, as a Group, it had to perform better than it had been prior to the acquisition last year.

“We had some restructuring to do in the first few months, which was obviously very difficult, but so far we are delivering the results we need to be delivering.”

Najib Maalouf, managing director Middleby Corporation in Europe, added: “As you can imagine, it’s been a year of change with the integration of the AGA Rangemaster Group into the Middleby Corporation. The plan was always to transform the AGA Rangemaster business and the process is working. As a global business, Middleby, naturally, has very high expectations of its acquisitions. The AGA Rangemaster team has delivered and I’m pleased to say the brands are performing well under Middleby.”

Moving forward, Maalouf revealed that the plan is to manage AGA Rangemaster “in a more efficient way” and to leverage Middleby’s international footprint in order to make the brands more successful in the UK and in overseas markets.

“Middleby has two expectations of the AGA Rangemaster business,” he added. “One is for all brands – AGA, Rangemaster, Falcon, Mercury and Leisure – to perform better in the UK, through innovation and more disciplined management. The second is to take these brands globally and make them successful. And that is what’s happening already.”

However, Maalouf was keen to stress that, although the Middleby and AGA Rangemaster brands would benefit from the integration, in terms of purchasing power, technology, innovation and marketing, they would continue to operate separately.

“We will leverage our purchasing power, our marketing and distribution but, at the end of the day, there is a very strong distinction between all of the brands,” he said. “We [Middleby] are very happy to have such distinctions and are not planning to amalgamate the brands into one. We want each individual brand to grow in the UK and overseas.”

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