History 2000: Tandberg to Buy Breece Hill for $11 Million

DLT and SLT tape drive company Tandberg Data acquires tape library manufacturer Breece Hill Technologies from Global Maintech.

Hard to imagine a better synergy between the 2 companies.

What’s more, both are strongly oriented on OEM business, which represents nearly 40% of Breece Hill’s sales, with Tandberg stronger in Europe, the second pulling 80% of its revenues in the US, and both current or former suppliers to IBM. Both firms are also well-known for the quality of their products.

While Breece Hill is mainly involved in DLT libraries, Tandberg is now venturing into DLT drive manufacturing.

Breece Hill Library

Until now, Tandberg turned to Adic and Overland Data for its libraries.

The transaction will cost the Norwegian firm $5.9 million, along with the repayment of $5.5 million of Breece Hill’s debt, all for a US firm that can expect 1999 revenues of $36 million, and with a positive operating balance for the first time since it was founded in 1993.

Breece Hill was acquired last year by Global Maintech, which is focused on enterprise solutions and therefore lacking in any real complementary with automation hardware.

Tandberg might have saved time by acquiring Breece Hill sooner, since Global Maintech under new CEO Trent Wong has been cleaning house, also selling off the PCB industry software operations to Infinite Graphics, a business activity it acquired in March 1998.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 144 on January 2000 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.