Home-grown technology group Alaris is targeting an increase of its share in the largest market it can enter as it pursues the acquisition of an undisclosed US company specialising in passive radio frequency and microwave, antenna solutions.

The group, through its UK subsidiary, Alaris Investment Holdings, signed a membership interest purchase agreement for an undisclosed amount in May.

“Some 60% of the market Alaris Holdings is involved in is happening over there. It is, by far, the biggest market we can get into. We believe that the timing is good because the defence spending in the US is increasing significantly at the moment,” Alaris Holdings group CEO Juergen Dresel tells Engineering News.

“I believe that [the US government] has approved a budget of $720-billion for 2019. And we suspect that this will increase [in the future],” he adds, noting that the US market remains the largest defence market in the world.

Alaris has had a presence in the US for several years.

“We see ourselves as clientcentric, which makes it important that we are geographically as close as possible to our customers in key markets like the US,” he says.

The acquisition is expected to offer “enormous” potential sales growth, with the company, overall, aiming to double its revenue over the next five years and further diversify the other companies within the Alaris group.

“We want to become a true global player,” Dresel avers.

The acquisition will complement the intellectual property and product ranges of Alaris Holdings’ two existing divisions, namely Alaris Antennas, in Centurion, and Cojot, in Finland.

The acquisition of antenna manufacturer Cojot Finland in 2016 was a major milestone for Alaris, increasing an already substantial European footprint.

Over 90% of Alaris’s radio frequency products for civilian and homeland security use are exported, and the group also has a strong presence in Asia and the Middle East.

Dresel comments further that the company is considering the possibility of acquiring a company in Eastern Europe for potential in-house production purposes.

Cojot currently outsources its production, unlike Alaris Antennas, which has in-house production capabilities.