Watts Acquires Fimet

    NORTH ANDOVER, Mass.--June 1, 2001--Watts Industries, Inc. announced today that it has acquired Fimet S.r.l. (Fabbrica Italiana Manometri e Termometri) located in Milan, Italy and a 100% Fimet owned subsidiary, MTB AD, which is located in Bulgaria.
    Timothy P. Horne, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, stated, "Fimet, with sales approaching 10 million Euros, is recognized as a leading European manufacturer of pressure and temperature gauges for use in the HVAC market export sales. Fimet's sales are split 60% to the Italian domestic market and 40% to export markets, with the highly demanding German market accounting for over 50% of the export sales. The range of gauges is one of the most comprehensive in the industry with applications ranging from water and air-operated systems to the more sophisticated oil-filled and remote sensing gauges required by industrial applications."
    Horne added, "This acquisition will enable Watts Industries Europe to further expand its product portfolio and customer base as Fimet brings new products to promote through our existing sales network and many OEM customers to whom we can introduce other Watts products and services. With the acquisition of Fimet, coupled with the acquisitions of Cazzaniga (Milan, Italy) in 1999 and Dumser (Landau, Germany) in January of this year, Watts now has one of the largest and most developed HVAC product portfolios in Europe, which is marketed through our own direct sales and distribution operations in both Western Europe and the major Eastern European countries."
    Horne concluded, "Although Fimet has concentrated for many years on meeting the needs of the European user base, it has recently developed a range of pressure and temperature gauges specifically for the American markets with NPT threads and scales in pounds per square inch of pressure and in degrees Fahrenheit. These products will be added to the Watts Regulator product portfolio so that we will be able to establish a market in the U.S. for these high quality products during the coming months."