With guidance from PKF, a UK automotive components manufacturer making valve spring retainers and plugs was successfully acquired in an MBO and has won a major order from the USA.

Business is already booming at 'Black Country' (West Midlands) manufacturers Complex cold forming (CCF), a company formed in a management buyout from McKechnie Specialist Products, part of Melrose. Husband and wife team Paul and Sandra Mulvey have purchased the business of PSM International Complex Cold Forming Division from Warwickshire-based Melrose in a deal advised by Andy Kay, corporate finance director at the Birmingham office of accountants and business advisers, PKF. The business is currently located in Willenhall but is due to move to newly-refurbished premises in Wednesbury in June.

CCF is an automotive components manufacturer making valve spring retainers and plugs supplying original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) including Ford, GM, Caterpillar, Opel and Holdens.

The company has already won a major new order from GM in the USA which will increase annual turnover by 25% from GBP 3.2 million to over GBP 4 million.

New owners Paul and Sandra Mulvey have already recruited Kevin Edwards as financial director and the business has retained its further 23 employees.

Paul Mulvey was sales and marketing director of the former business for three years before he was appointed managing director in August last year.

He said: 'It became apparent that Melrose, which has its roots in the aerospace industry, did not regard PSM International's Complex Cold Forming Division as a core activity.

One of the options they were prepared to consider was to sell the business.' But now with a new management team in Paul Mulvey with wife Sandra as administration director, the business is forging ahead.

The directors have already announced plans to invest a third of the company's turnover in the first year in new equipment which will include a GBP 1 million Formax cold heading machine and GBP 100,000 in an optical sorting machine.

Paul Mulvey said: 'With guidance from Andy Kay at PKF we have been able to buy what was an eminently viable business and put in place plans to grow the company.

The major order from GM in the States is a tremendous boost to us and we are hopeful of winning further work from Ford in Germany.' Funding for the MBO, for an undisclosed price, was arranged through Chris Jones at Eurosales Finance and legal advice to the MBO team was provided by Adrian Cutler and Darren Walker of Cobbetts.

David Allison of Martineau Johnson provided legal advice to Melrose and Richard Cliff at George Green advised Eurosales Finance.

PKF corporate finance director Andy Kay said: 'We congratulate Paul and Sandra Mulvey on the management buyout.

The deal was done in a tough economic environment where cost pressures from OEMs are continuing, but this demonstrates that quality niche component businesses can not only do well but prosper and grow.'