Federal-Mogul Buys BorgWarner’s Sparkplug Unit

BorgWarner Inc. is selling its Beru sparkplug business to Federal-Mogul Corp. on undisclosed terms.

The unit, which generated sales of about $80 million last year, includes factories in France and Germany with combined annual output of 350 million sparkplugs.

BorgWarner acquired the unit in 2005 as part of its purchase of diesel component maker Beru AG and expects to incur a pretax loss of $50 million-$60 million on the sale.

Federal-Mogul plans merge the Beru operations into its global ignition unit, which includes the Champion spark plug business. The company says it will sell Beru plugs to the brand's existing carmaker and aftermarket customers in Europe.