June 2011: Stewart Plastics BIMBO backed by ECI
Stewart Plastics BIMBO backed by ECI
June 2011
Cameron Barney advises on MBI of Stewart Group with ECI Partners, valuing the Company at £17 million.
Cameron Barney LLP is pleased to announce that it acted as exclusive financial adviser to the shareholders and MBI team in the acquisition of Croydon-based Stewart Group Holdings Ltd (“Stewart”) in a BIMBO (buy-in / management buyout) deal that values the business at £17 million.
Stewart is the UK market leader in the manufacture and supply of technical plastic moulded products for the gardening, home, professional catering and medical storage sectors. Stewart employs 75 people in Croydon and enjoyed a turnover in 2010 of £15 million.
Richard Butler, who joins as the Group CEO, brings significant knowledge of the advanced technical plastics sector from working for leading manufacturers in the aerospace and automotive sector.
Lee Mowle, the current owner and CEO, will remain with the business as Managing Director of the gardening and catering divisions and retains a substantial shareholding in the company. Three other senior managers within Stewart are also becoming shareholders in the business as part of the transaction.
“At Stewart, we have worked hard and successfully for the last eight years, first to turn round the business and return it to growth. We now see lots of new opportunities for the business in both our existing and new markets. I was very pleased to work with Cameron Barney who brought a wealth of experience and insight to this transaction.”
The transaction, which brings significant investment form ECI, is designed to accelerate Stewart’s already successful product innovation strategy, and will pursue targeted acquisitions of complementary product businesses in its existing core markets. It will also use Richard Butler’s experience to expand into new markets which can benefit from its unusually deep and broad technical capabilities.
“This transaction is an excellent example of how Cameron Barney can assist a management team to structure a buyout and obtain growth capital to underpin further expansion of a business. We were pleased to have been able to design a solution that enabled the existing CEO to participate in the future of a business he had turned around and now attract fresh institutional capital alongside a new CEO.”
“Cameron Barney convinced existing shareholders not to sell to a trade purchaser but to continue to build the business with an enhanced management team and private equity finance. They developed the trust of all stakeholders such that a very complicated transaction was accomplished within a demanding timetable.”
