Sesotec sells subsidiary ASM Advanced Sorting Machines SRL

The Italian company to become part of the Bulgarian ELICA Group

Schönberg, October 2020

For six years, the Italian company ASM Advanced Sorting Machines belonged to the German Sesotec GmbH. A manufacturer of optical sorting machines for seeds, ASM has now been acquired by ELICA GROUP, a leading Bulgarian manufacturer of equipment for sunflower seed hulling, grain cleaning, seed treatment, and bulk material processing.

Sesotec and ELICA signed the purchase agreement on October 5th, 2020, thereby transferring 100% of the company’s shares. The result of negotiations that began at the start of 2020, the acquisition is expected to be completed by the end of the calendar year.

With the sale of their Italian subsidiary, Sesotec takes another step in the direction of concentrating on its core business: foreign object detection in the food and plastics industries, and material sorting and analysis in the recycling industry.

Offering more than 30 years of experience in developing and manufacturing optical sorting systems for seeds, ASM is a strategic fit for ELICA, a company with which it had already been collaborating for over twelve years. In the previous year, the two companies made joint appearances at two international trade shows, sharing booths at the INDAGRA in Bucharest and the CSS & SEED EXPO in Chicago. With the acquisition of ASM, ELICA is dedicated to ensuring the long-term, sustainable growth of both companies.

Marc Setzen, CEO of Sesotec, on the divestiture of ASM: “The implementation of our growth strategy involves focusing on the areas in which we have over 40 years of expertise and a position of market leadership. Our core business has the potential to rise to some of the major challenges of our time, offering cutting-edge technological innovations that win value for people, the environment, and industry. True to our value proposition, we remain committed to offering intelligent technologies and services for foreign object detection, material sorting, and analysis in order to help our customers design safe, efficient, and compliant production processes.”

Though the two companies will no longer be acting as parent and subsidiary, Sesotec and ASM will remain linked. A cooperation agreement is in discussion that would designate ASM as the distributor of Sesotec’s foreign object detection devices for the food and plastics industries in the Italian market.