Sapphire buys rail infrastructure firm for 360m yuan in turnaround strategy

LOSS-MAKING Sapphire Corporation on Tuesday announced it plans to acquire a China-based engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) business for 360 million yuan (S$75.9 million).

This is part of its corporate turnaround strategy to grow via railway infrastructure and engineering projects, after disposing of its loss-making steel business.

The company has entered into a conditional deal to buy Hong Kong-incorporated Ranken Infrastructure via an issue of new Sapphire shares worth S$16.5 million at S$0.10 each.

This will be issued to all 34 individual owners of Ranken, followed by a subsequent capital injection of 282 million yuan.

Ranken, based in Beijing and Chengdu, is China's second largest privately-owned rail transport infrastructure construction group. Its clients are mostly state-owned enterprises and Fortune-500 companies in China. It has also executed the second-largest railway infrastructure project in Bangladesh and other major jobs in India.