In the year to the end of March 2007, APV produced an operating profit of £16m on a revenue of £421m, and at that date had gross assets worth £284m. It has been Invensys’ lowest margin operation.

APV has around 3,000 employees in more than 40 countries, and will take SPX’s global workforce to around 17,000.

"I am pleased that APV will be owned by SPX Corporation as it is a good strategic fit with their existing businesses," says Invensys chief executive, Ulf Henriksson. "This is a good deal for both Invensys and SPX. This transaction enables us to focus management attention on our other operations as we seek to become a sustainable, high-performance and cohesive company."

"APV is a strong strategic fit with SPX and will expand our manufacturing, sales and distribution operations for process equipment in Europe, Asia Pacific and worldwide," adds SPX’s president and CEO, Chris Kearney. "By combining APV`s research and development and engineering expertise, together with its strong portfolio of process solutions and technical knowledge, with SPX`s existing businesses, we expect to enhance our growth in the flow technology arena."

Don Canterna, president of SPX’s flow technology business, remarks that "APV`s products are highly complementary to our existing flow product portfolio and we expect significant product, production and cost synergies for our process equipment business".

SPX is a Fortune 500 company that specialises in engineered solutions to solve critical problems for customers. This is its third European acquisition this year. Earlier, it bought the European diagnostics division of Johnson Controls, located in France, and Matra-Werke, a subsidiary of the Kion Group in Germany.

The APV sale is expected to be completed by the end of December 2007, subject to regulatory approval.