Beretta buys RUAG Ammotec

THE Italian firm Beretta Holding has announced that it has signed a binding agreement to acquire total ownership of Swiss ammunition manufacturer RUAG Ammotec, subject to mandatory government approvals. The move, which sees one European giant swallow another whole, is the largest the gun trade has seen in years and has sent shock waves through the industry.

RUAG’s last posted figures show a turnover of over £400 million pounds in 2020 (CHF497 million) and it employs around 2,700 people across Europe. It is probably best known for its heritage European small arms ammunition brands such as RWS, Norma, weil and Geco.

Pietro Gussalli Beretta, President and CEO of Beretta Holding, stated “This is a very special moment in the history of our group. We warmly welcome the employees of RUAG Ammotec to our group, having worked for almost three years on this project. During this time we have recognised that RUAG Ammotec is a very good cultural fit with our group, and a strong, competent and experienced management is in place. This will help tremendously to integrate RUAG Ammotec into our group.” Beretta has a firmly established manufacturing capacity in guns and optics; this combined with

RUAG Ammotec’s expertise in am- munition will surely see them be- come a one-stop shop for government and other agencies and make them immediately one of the bigger players in the global defence market, with a combined turnover close to £1.5 billion.

While no exact buyout price has been made public, the involvement of Italian takeover specialists Medio- banca suggests that the sums involved were significant.

While the clear aim of the deal is to create a defence superpower in Europe, quite what the implications are for the UK leisure market is less clear. In particular, several brands distributed by RUAG Ammotec in the UK, such as Perazzi, will no doubt be left wondering what the outlook is for them now. In the short term it will no doubt be business as usual, but longer term there may well be some shifting of assets and renegotiation or termination of agreements resulting from this sale.

No one from GMK, Beretta’s UK subsidiary and distributor, was prepared to comment publicly on the news, though one insider did tell Gun Trade News that the deal had been done with minimal participation from GMK, and that it was waiting like everyone else to fully understand the implications. GTN