Premier Farnell announces that it has reached agreement to sell BuckHickman to the BSS Group for approximately £27m.

According to the catalogue and online distributor, the sale is consistent with its strategy to focus on the faster growing electronic design engineer market.

Premier Farnell’s CEO Harriet Green told EW last week that the electronic design market was the strongest growing sector and that her target was to see as much as half of sales coming from online business within three years.

"Today's sale represents another key deliverable for us against our strategy for profitable growth announced last October,” said Harriet Green, Premier Farnell's chief executive.

"Our other European businesses continue to enjoy strong performance as we pursue our global strategy to deliver profitable growth through focusing on the fast growing Electronic Design Engineering segment; extending our web offering to become a true multi-channel distributor and internationalising our business model into new markets," said Green.

BuckHickman is a UK-based distributor of industrial tools. For the financial year ending 28 January 2007, the business reported sales of £99.8m and operating losses before interest and tax of £0.8m.