The Aqualung Group – owner of Aqualung, Apeks and Aquasphere – has announced it is in takeover talks with HEAD Group – the owner of Mares – just over a year after the company was acquired by Barings.
A statement published by Aqualung said that HEAD Group company has ‘entered into exclusive discussions regarding the potential acquisition of 100 per cent of Aqualung Group.’
The proposal is subject to regulatory approvals and due legal process, but would be a significnat expansion of HEAD’s already voluminous catalogue.
HEAD was originally founded in the US in 1947 as a skiing equipment company by Howard Head, who designed the first metal skis. The brand became a household name in the 1970s as a manufacturer of the first aluminium tennis racquets.
Today, the company is based in Kennelbach, Austria, and has expanded to include a number of major international scuba diving brands, including MARES, which it acquired in 1971 and the SSI training organisation in 2014. HEAD Group also owns rEVo Rebreathers and the international scuba travel company liveaboard.com.
Aqualung Group has struggled financially since the completion of its acquisition by Barings in December 2023. Despite selling the US Divers brand in April 2024 and Stohlquist watersports the following month, there have been supply issues leading to customers missing out on their orders.
An Aqualung employee who reached out anonymously to the scuba diving media said they were ‘excited that, with Head, we will have the money to pay to get inventory.’
‘We do not like what Barings and Montagu did to our business, since they took over we have struggled to do anything and the business has been getting harder and harder,’ continued the source. ‘They did not put more money into the business when we needed it, so we can not grow and only get smaller.
‘Last week we had to tell our customers we could not supply them with many items as we do not have the money to pay suppliers and many customers are quite angry about it, so hopefully, this will stop now and we can get back to protecting our customers.’
Aqualung, founded in 1943 by Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Émile Gagnan, was the first company to successfully produce a commercially available open-circuit demand valve – the forerunner of the modern scuba diving regulator.
Its products are popular with scuba divers and the company also has a strong military division. A spokesperson for HEAD Group said that the company intensts to maintain and develop both Aqualung’s sport and military operations.
HEAD also says that it plans ‘to build on Aqualung Group’s production capabilities to support the global production and distribution of premium products. The combined expertise of the two companies would generate strong synergies, accelerate market leadership, and open new opportunities to broaden access to water sports worldwide’
