Brulines moves into AWP market

Brulines is moving into the AWP monitoring market with the acquisition of a 66 per cent stake in Milton Keynes-based Coin Metrics.

Brulines, which manufactures and sells beer dispense measuring equipment, announced today it has acquired the stake for £685,000, of which £622,750 was paid in cash with the balance accounted for by Brulines shares.

Coin Metrics was founded in 2005 and has developed what it calls the 'Site Guardian', a wireless data system that allows its customers in the AWP industry to monitor in real time the financial performance of their gaming machines.

There are more than 4,000 Site Guardian units in premises across the UK, according to Brulines, and James Dickson, the group's chief executive, said the acquisition would give his company "a solid platform to cross sell and also take a market leading portfolio to a widening market".

Dickson said the acquisition "would enable Brulines to accelerate our growing AWP data management business to market leadership through real time remote download of data from AWP machines, whilst also opening up new applications and markets for the next generation of wireless data capture systems such as vending.

"The deal has strong product synergy and very little overlap between our respective customer bases where there are already strong relationships," he added.

Announcing the acquisition, Brulines noted that a potential claim had been lodged against the founders of Coin Metrics, arising from work carried out by their previous company, a software consultancy called Wireless Futures.

Brulines, while not revealing the nature of the claim, said it "had been made aware of [the situation] and after investigation of the merits considers that there is no substance to it".