MACFARLANE Group has returned to the acquisition trail with a deal to buy a south of England protective packaging business for nearly £4 million.
Glasgow-based Macfarlane has agreed to pay up to £3.85m in cash for B&D 2010 Group, which employs 15 staff and supplies customers in the aerospace, defence, and space sectors, throughout the UK and internationally, from its facility in Southampton.
The listed Scottish firm said there are significant opportunities to provide B&D’s existing customers with additional packaging solutions and win new customers in the sectors it operates within. B&D generated sales of £2.6m and underlying profits of £0.5m for the year ended December 31, and has enjoyed strong growth in 2023 to date.
READ MORE: Chivas Brothers reveals plans to build distillery on Islay
Macfarlane said its wholly-owned subsidiary, Macfarlane Group UK, has acquired 100% of B&D for a maximum cash consideration of £3.85m, which includes an earn-out of up to £0.55m based on agreed profit growth target over one year. It has financed entirely from its existing £35m bank facility.
Macfarlane chief executive Peter Atkinson said: “B&D is an excellent business servicing high quality customers in attractive growth sectors and complements Macfarlane’s existing specialist protective packaging activities. We look forward to working with the team at B&D to support its continued growth.”
The deal comes after Mr Atkinson said the company had a “pretty healthy acquisition pipeline both in the UK and in Europe” as Macfarlane reported its results for the first half in August.
READ MORE: Soaring costs hit profits at famous Scottish shortbread firm
"We made our first European acquisition last year in Germany, a company called PackMann, and we are very hopeful that we will complete one more acquisition this year,” he said. “And then we will be looking to do more acquisitions as we go into 2024.”
The company made a pre-tax profit of £10m in the first six months of 2023, up 13% on the same period last year. Revenues were 2% higher at £141.6m.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here