China's Rightleder Holding Group is in talks to buy Israeli water purification company AMS Technologies (Advanced Membrane Separation). Several companies are reportedly interested in acquiring Or Yehuda based AMS but Rightleder, which already has interests in water purification, is ahead of the field. Any acquisition would be for several tens of millions of dollars.
AMS denies being in talks with Rightleder.
AMS was founded in 2012 out of the ashes of Biopure, which had been founded in the 1990s and raised $17.5 million from Israeli venture capital funds Pitango Venture Capital, Aurum Ventures MKI Ltd., US Venture Partners (USVP), Elron Electronic Industries Ltd. (TASE: ELRN), and Stratify. Biopure failed and AMS acquired its assets cheaply.
AMS specializes in membrane separation mainly of effluent in difficult environmental circumstances. The company sells its products to factories requiring purification for effluent and to construction companies building such factories. AMS is considered a world leader in membrane separation that can withstand tough environmental conditions. The company says that its membranes have been tested and proven to exhibit a high degree of chemical stability with the ability to operate in high concentrations of acid, alkaline and organic solvents and their mixtures.
AMS is headed by CEO Gil Meron, a manager in the Yarden Group, the main investor in the company. Yarden Group is a cleantech consultancy and investment company, which is involved with Algatechnologies, which received a $50 million investment from Britain's Grovepoint. Meron was formerly with the Boston Consulting Group and manager of a research unit at IBM. AMS has several dozen employees.
Rightleder has major holdings in purification with an emphasis on desalination but it also has effluent purification operations similar to the field in which AMS works. Rightleder has hundreds of millions of dollars revenue in water purification alone.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 24, 2016
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