CVC Capital Partners has agreed to acquire Smiths Detection, the airport security scanner business of Smiths Group, in a transaction valuing the unit at £2bn ($2.7bn).

Smiths expects net cash proceeds of about £1.85bn and plans to return a large portion to shareholders. The move follows the company’s £1bn share buyback announced in November and forms part of a broader restructuring designed to streamline the group around its John Crane and Flex-Tek divisions.

The UK engineering conglomerate has been divesting non-core assets after a strategic review earlier this year and amid pressure from activist investor Engine Capital, which argued that the group’s complex structure was suppressing its valuation. Smiths also recently agreed to sell its Interconnect business, which manufactures cable and wiring.

Shares in Smiths Group climbed as much as 4.9% in London following the announcement and have gained more than 40% this year, lifting its market value above £8bn. The £2bn price tag represents 16.3 times Smiths Detection’s headline operating profit of £122m for the financial year to July.

The sale marks another sizeable deployment of private equity capital into industrial technology, with CVC securing a scaled global supplier of screening systems used in aviation, defence, and critical infrastructure.

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