UK
Johnson Service Group (JSG) has announced the acquisition on 31 August of Cornish-based laundry business, South West Laundry. The entire share capital of South West Laundry Holdings, together with its trading subsidiary South West Laundry, has been acquired for £15.5 million. The company, based in Hayle, Cornwall predominantly services the hotel and restaurant market.
JSG said the deal "effectively opens up a new geographical trading area" as it has very little existing business in Devon and Cornwall. The takeover comes almost 18 months after a fire broke out at the site in March 2017. It has since been completely refurbished with new equipment and currently employs 100 staff and processes some 340,000 pieces of linen per week.
For the year to 28 February 2018, South West Laundry generated revenue of £5.1m and profit before taxation of £2.6m.
One of the directors currently managing the business, Wayne Retallack, will be joining the Stalbridge team and continue to run South West Laundry.
The acquisition comes as JSG reported its half-year results for the six months to 30 June 2018, with revenue from continuing operations increasing from £138m to £152.2m. Pre-tax profits were also up from £12.9m to £14m.
“Our strategic vision to continue to grow our business through organic growth supplemented by well planned acquisitions is on track with the latest being South West Laundry in August 2018 in the far South West of England,” said JSG. “While we have extended our services over a large part of the UK there are still some geographical regions of the country in which we are not represented as the distances are beyond economic travel from our existing facilities.
“We therefore believe there are still further opportunities for us to extend our geographical reach through further acquisition when the opportunities arise. We have recently increased our available bank facilities to support this growth.
“Our strong sales growth, high levels of customer retention and productivity benefits from recent investments give us confidence in the second half performance and, as a result, we expect results for the full year to be slightly ahead of current market expectations.”
