News

UNOVA plans to sell Cincinnati Lamb and Landis Grinding.

Six and a half years after buying Cincinnati Milacron's machine tool business, Unova Inc. is selling it.

The company employs about 350 people in Hebron, mostly in its aerospace technologies and aftermarket customer support units that are based there. In 1998, when Unova purchased Milacron's renowned machine tool group, the business employed 2,400 people.

Unova said it's selling two of its businesses -- the machine tool group, now called Cincinnati Lamb, and Landis Grinding, to concentrate on its Intermec Technologies subsidiary that markets automated data collection systems, including radio-frequency identification (RFID) products, mobile computing systems, bar code printers and stock for bar-code labels.

Unova, now based in Everett, Wash., said it has reclassified its industrial machinery unit, now known as Cincinnati Lamb, as a discontinued operation and expects to sell it and Landis by the end of the year.

The machine tool business has not performed well in recent years. After reporting operating profits at the unit, then called Cincinnati Machine, in 1998 and 1999, Unova reported operating losses from 2000 through 2003. It didn't break out the unit's results in 2004, but the combined industrial operations segment reported a 14 percent increase in sales but an operating loss of $1.8 million for the nine months ended in September, improved from a $23 million loss in the same period in 2003.

Unova's fourth-quarter earnings, released Monday, included a non- cash charge of $103 million for the writedown of Cincinnati Lamb's assets to their estimated fair value, the company reported.

In total, the discontinued operations were listed on the company's Dec. 31 balance sheet as having a net asset value of $41 million. Unova spokesman Kevin McCarty said they had an estimated market value of about $125 million.

Unova purchased the machine tool business for $180 million in 1998.

Company officials said they thought the Landis Grinding business was worth more than its book value. "There's a variety of strategic and financial buyers that are interested," McCarty said. Asked if the interested parties are from the United States or foreign countries, he said the interest was "worldwide."

The next step is for prospective buyers to examine the finances and operations and then for Unova to hammer out a deal, he said.

Cincinnati Lamb is headquartered in Warren, Mich., north of Detroit. Unova combined the operations of Cincinnati Machine with its Lamb Technicon unit in 2003. As part of that reorganization, it moved most of its area operations from Milacron's historic campus in Oakley to Hebron. It still owns the Oakley property.