Kwik-Fit sold to Japanese 04 | 03 | 2011

KWIK-FIT, THE Broxburn-based fast-fit tyre company forever associated with Sir Tom Farmer, has been sold to the same Japanese group which owns UK fast-fit rival Stapleton’s Tyre Services (STS).

Farmer opened the first Kwik-Fit centre in McDonald Road in Edinburgh back in 1971. Twenty-eight years later, in 1999, he sold the company to Ford for a reported £1.6 billion!

After a succession of subsequent sales, including Ford selling the company to CVC Capital Partners at a significant loss, it's now in the hands of the Japanese.

The £637m deal puts the UK’s largest fast-fit chain in the hands of Itochu Corporation, a multinational £25bn-turnover trading company with wide wide-ranging interests, including tyre-related businesses, textiles and machinery.

Itochu has owned STS since 1994 and has grown that business into a network of more than 110 fast-fit workshops plus a national tyre wholesaling operation.

The addition of Kwik-Fit — which turns over £900m — will, if approved by the competition authorities, give Itochu an additional 1218 workshops in Europe, 673 of which are in the UK.

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Jim McGill