Micro-P buys consumables distributor Advent Data

Distributor claims acquisition of Dell, Epson, Oki and Brother distributor will hand it critical mass in supplies market

Distributor Micro Peripherals (Micro-P) has acquired supplies distributor Advent Data for an initial consideration of £10.2m.

With a turnover of £129m, Elland-based Advent Data has 111 staff and works with all the major consumables vendors barring HP.

Talking to ChannelWeb, Micro-P managing director Gerry O'Keefe said the deal would hand the distributor critical mass in a consumables market it had previously only dabbled in.

"The nature of the consumables market is driven by pan-European agreements and volume, so to get the best prices you need scale," he said. "Advent gives us the ability to offer very competitive prices to our broader dealer base and we can sell our print hardware through them."

Similar to Micro-P's acquisition of security distie Tekdata in 2007, Advent Data will operate as a standalone unit and retain its brand name. "It has a very effective back-office and distribution capacity so we will leave it well alone," explained O'Keefe.

Advent Data's managing director, Raj Advani, and sales director, Rob Barneveld, have committed to staying on for at least three years, he added.

O'Keefe said no decision has yet been made on what to do with Advent Data's two end-user businesses, Leco and OYYY, but stressed they contributed less than 10 per cent of its turnover.

"Leco was a business purchased by Advent [a few years back] and just happened to be in there," said O'Keefe. "We have no plans either way at the moment and will assess what we do as we go forward."

O'Keefe emphasised that Advent Data is Dell's only pure consumables distributor in the UK, complementing its own alliance with Dell, and claimed the two organisations were similar culturally. It also works with Epson, Oki, Brother and Kyocera, while second sourcing HP.

According to a recent Companies House filing, Advent Data generated a profit of £4.3m on revenues that rose 6.7 per cent to £129m.

"It works with 1,000 dealers," said O'Keefe. "There is some crossover with our database but it brings us a lot of new customers, which is always interesting."

Advent will be known as a Micro-P company alongside Tekdata and Irish broadliner Sharptext, but the acquisition was announced this morning by the distributor's Dublin- and London-listed parent company DCC Group.

DCC will pay an initial cash consideration of £10.2m for Advent, with a further cash consideration of up to £15m payable based on the firm's results over the next three years.

James Kight, managing director of VAR Printerland, said: "This will definitely encourage me to spend more money with Micro-P on hardware. A lot of our customers buy consumables with their hardware and at the moment we are having to buy from two sources."

Alex Ward, commercial director at rival print distributor Midwich, said: "Micro-P will run its business as it sees fit but if it was us we would have folded the reseller business before we even acquired it."