For $950 million, Honeywell International Inc. is selling its automotive consumer products group based in Danbury to Rank Group Limited, a private equity company in New Zealand led by billionaire Graeme Hart.
Honeywell”™s consumer products group employs 2,000 people and had $1 billion in revenue last year, selling name brands like Autolite spark plugs, Prestone antifreeze, FRAM oil filters and Holts car care products such as Simoniz cleansers and Redex fuel additives.
In the fourth quarter of 2010, the unit”™s sales were up 14 percent from a year earlier. Honeywell CEO Dave Cote called it a good business that doesn”™t fit with Honeywell”™s portfolio of technology products.
“There”™s always stuff that you look at and say, ”˜It might fit better somewhere else ”“ let”™s come up with a smart way of exiting,”™” Cote said, in a late-January conference call with investment analysts.
The company listed its Danbury operations among its dozen key locations in the U.S.; Honeywell”™s Connecticut operations also include its Life Safety division in Northford encompassing fire detection and other sensor technologies.
Rank Group did not immediately specify a name for the new business, which has had a succession of leaders in recent years, and which is currently led by Craig Breese.
Last year, the Clorox Co. sold off its own automotive consumer products group in Danbury for $780 million to Avista Capital Partners, with the business now called Armored AutoGroup selling Armor All and STP, among other products, with about 30 employees in Danbury and 160 in all.
Other brands sold by Armored AutoGroup include Oomph! and Tuff Stuff cleansers, and Son of a Gun interior protectants.
Armored AutoGroup CEO David Lundstedt previously headed Honeywell”™s consumer products group in Danbury, before becoming president of Sun Products Corp., a Wilton-based company formed from the combination of Unilever”™s North American laundry business and Huish Detergents Inc., a Salt Lake City-based company Lundstedt had led.
Chris Stephens replaced Lundstedt as president of Honeywell consumer products before leaving to become chief financial officer at Barnes Group Inc., a Bristol-based aerospace parts maker.
In a December interview, Lundstedt said he did not find it difficult to switch gears and lead an entity that at one time was one of his biggest rivals.
As the case with Armored AutoGroup”™s STP product line, Prestone was once the property of Union Carbide Corp., the Danbury giant that would in time spin off Praxair Inc., now the largest industrial gases company doing business in North America.
Prestone traces its history to the 1920s, when it was developed as an alternative to homebrewed antifreeze solutions containing alcohol, molasses and honey, among others. FRAM was started in 1934 in Providence, R.I.; a few years later Autolite”™s founders would create their first spark plug in Fostoria, Ohio. Holts goes back more than 65 years to its launch in the United Kingdom.
In the past few months, Danbury has been on a small roll. While Pepsi Bottling Group Inc. elected to remain in Somers, N.Y. ”“ real estate brokers say Danbury was seriously considered as an alternative ”“ in addition to the consumer auto product spinouts Danbury also recently became home to the North American operations of Italian biodegradable plastics company Novamont. The company”™s stateside operation employs 200 people and had $115 million in revenue last year.
