A global engineering and manufacturing firm's increased offer to buy Greater Manchester-based healthcare and industrial business Scapa Group, which values the listed company at more than £410m, has been recommended to shareholders.
Ashton-under-Lyne-based Scapa is listed on AIM and specialises in wound care, with sales operations around North America, Europe and Asia. Revenues for the financial year to March 2020 were £320.6m.
The upped offer comes after an original agreement with AMS Holdco 2, a subsidiary of US-based Schweitzer-Mauduit International Inc (SWM) was announced in January.
The offer was for 210p in cash per share and valued the firm at £402.9m.
SWM is a leading global performance materials company, engineering films, nets and papers - serving markets from medical to tobacco to home decor.
However shareholder Blackmoor Investment Partners said last month that it believed the bid 'wholly undervalued' the business.
The offer has now been increased to 215p per share, valuing the company at about £412.6m.
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Speaking in January, Heejae Chae, chief executive of Scapa, said: "The Scapa team has worked tirelessly to build our brand to be globally recognised as an innovative, solutions-driven partner for outsourced product development and manufacture.
"As another multinational producer for outsourced performance materials, SWM has been on a similar journey to us, also extending into healthcare markets having initially been focused on customers in the industrials sector.
"We believe the combination of our complementary businesses will bring benefits to all stakeholders.
"We see these not only resulting from increased scale, but also from an increased ability to cross-sell products across our respective client bases, as well as an increased potential to enhance inorganic growth from within a larger group.
"We believe the enlarged business will also provide greater career development opportunities for employees."