Rolls strikes £610m deal

Rolls-Royce is selling its engine technology firm l’orange to Us based engineering firm Woodward for £610m.

l’orange will continue to supply Rolls- Royce for at least another 15 years.

Based in stuttgart, Germany, l’orange makes fuel injection technology for industrial engines such as those powering ferries and electricity plants.

It has 1,000 employees based mostly in Germany but also in the Us and china and made sales of £212m last year.

colorado- based Woodward designs and manufactures control systems and components for the aerospace and industrial sectors. Rolls is trying to simplify its business and plans to sell its commercial marine division to slim down to three core units.

Boss Warren east, 55, said: ‘This transaction builds on the actions we have taken over the last two years to simplify our business.’

selling l’orange enables RollsRoyce ‘ to focus on other longterm, high growth opportunities’, he said. east is trying to drive down costs, and plans to cut a new layer of management.

last month Rolls reported £1.1bn in profits for 2017, as it continues to recover following a string of profit warnings in 2016.

Rolls-Royce, which has 50,000 staff across 50 countries, fell into the red by £4.6bn in 2016 in what was its largest ever loss and one of the biggest in UK corporate history, after being knocked by the pound’s plunge and a corruption scandal. shares in the FTse 100 engineer rose 1.2pc, or 10.8p, to 878.8p as investors welcomed the deal.