May 2013
BSI, the business standards company, today announced it has completed the acquisition of NCS International (NCSI), a wholly owned subsidiary of The National Association of Testing Authorities, Australia. NCSI offers a variety of internationally recognized business verification, assessment and certification programs across industry sectors including food, health and services, mining and utilities.
The acquisition of NCSI complements and expands BSI’s strategy to offer a greater range of integrated services from a single provider in Australia and significantly broadens the footprint and scalability of the operations with offices in each of the major state capitals. It also enhances BSI product offering by providing new certification expertise in the key sectors of agri-food and healthcare, not only in Australia but globally.
Howard Kerr, Chief Executive at BSI comments: “This acquisition meets the BSI growth strategy, strengthens our expertise in food security and healthcare sectors and will enable Australian clients to better embed habits of excellence in all aspects of their business.
“We have confidence in the resilience and long-term prospects for the Australian economy, a country where we first collaborated with Standards Australia in the 1930’s. We’ve supported clients in Australia for over 25 years, certifying our first client in 1986 and strengthened our presence in 2006 when we acquired Benchmark Australia. This acquisition further demonstrates our commitment to invest in our Australian business, to deliver greater benefits to Australian industry and to help clients compete more effectively domestically and through our global network.”
NCSI is a well-established and highly regarded company which is strongly aligned to BSI’s business and values. The combined expertise will help to grow the business through independent assessment, training and certification to a variety of Standards and Codes of Practice. This will be complemented by the introduction of BSI’s portfolio of compliance and supply chain solutions. Nick Koukoulas, Managing Director, Australia at BSI says: ”Our two companies share many core values – we have similar foundations and both have a commitment to meet the real needs of clients, and helping them embed excellence in their organization. This results in better performance, better risk management and sustainable growth.” BSI will integrate the NCSI organization with its existing operations in Australia.
Kerr concludes on BSI’s acquisition strategy: “Over the past decade BSI has continued to grow our client base organically and increase our global footprint during extremely challenging economic conditions. With now over 70,000 clients across 150 countries, we are one of the largest certification bodies world-wide and we have even greater ambitions for future growth. This includes future quality acquisitions like NCSI.”
BSI also published its financial results for 2012 with 13 years of unbroken revenue and profit growth. Revenue was up five per cent (CER*) to AUD 389 million with underlying operating profit up 11% to AUD 49 million. BSI also has no external debt and AUD 63 million in cash reserves.
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. The expected combined revenue for the year ahead in Australia is AUD 35 million.
