AHT Cooling Systems, the Austria-based leading refrigeration specialist, recently announced it has purchased the UK company Caravell as part of its growth strategy. AHT will integrate Caravell and its €23 million turnover into its existing AHT UK company.

 

This purchase makes AHT confident it can gain major synergies in selling its renowned product portfolio via the existing Caravell sales network. The CEO of AHT, Hans Jörgensen, declared: “With this purchase AHT will be in a position to grow its UK business at a faster rate - which will contribute to the AHT target of doubling the size of the company within five years.” All existing Caravell product lines will be re-branded AHT. The brand name Caravell will be dropped as AHT wants to indicate and underline that AHT as a brand name is the future of the company and builds on its international success. The Scanfrost brand will continue in the UK as the value for money range and will be used on all the products not manufactured by AHT.

 

The Caravell management team, led by John Lougher, will work alongside with the current head of the existing AHT Team, Stephen Burke; Hans Jensen, the previous chairman of Caravell UK, will take up a new role, working on a global basis for AHT’s worldwide business. In the future, AHT’s UK business will have two divisions: The supermarket division will manage chest freezers and will be run by Stephen Burke and his team; all other products such as bottle coolers, ice cream freezers etc. will be handled by John Lougher and his team, reveals the company’s press release.