Coats Sells North America Crafts Business. The sale includes the well known Crafts brands Red Heart, Coats & Clark, Aunt Lydia and Susan Bates. Anchor, Dual Duty XP and J&P Coats will be licensed for varying terms. Around 560 North America Crafts employees, will become part of Spinrite. The manufacturing site and distribution center in Albany, and the sites in Toccoa and Douglas will transfer to Spinrite ownership.

Spinrite produces both branded and private label products and has different presence across multiple channels with a focus on craft retailers. It is headquartered in Listowel, Ontario, Canada founded in 1952. It is well positioned, knowledgeable and connected to drive the NAm Crafts business ahead.

Industrial thread manufacturer Coats has sold it’s North America Crafts business to Spinrite, a craft company and provider of craft knitting yarns in North America.

The initial cash consideration payable at completion is $37 million. The sale which is conditional upon a limited number of conditions usual for this type of transaction, is anticipated to complete during the coming weeks. Proceeds from the sale will be used to make further value accretive acquisitions in the strategic focus areas of high-tech Performance Materials and Software Solutions businesses.

Rajiv Sharma, group chief executive, Coats, said that, ‘We are proud of our 120 years of crafts heritage in North America and the long association we have had with crafters but the crafting market has evolved in the past decade. This requires a higher degree of specialization, scale, innovation and digital capabilities to succeed. The sale of our standalone North America Crafts will have a stronger future with Spinrite. It also allows us to focus complete attention on our high performing business-to-business global Apparel and Footwear, and Performance Materials segments.’