Watch: Business Briefing 22nd January 2025

Insider Media

Phil and Stephen discuss the acquisitions of a facilities management business and an asset leasing firm, a tissue paper manufacturing facility in Yorkshire and a student living scheme in Bristol.

Transcript

00:00The acquisition of an asset leasing company, and a facilities management company, a student

00:07accommodation scheme in Bristol, and a major property scheme in the Humber region, all

00:13coming up in this morning's Business Briefing, brought to you by Shawbrooke.

00:18Well, good morning. My name's Phil Cunliffe. I'm Stephen Farrell.

00:28We're here to bring you some of the stories that are featured on the newsletter this morning.

00:32Stephen, I think you've got a story, an acquisition story for us.

00:36Yeah, that's right. So, starting off with a really significant deal. It's going to affect

00:41hundreds of staff across the UK. We've got the news that Maxim FM Facilities Management

00:46Company, headquartered in Sunderland, has been acquired by an Ipswich-headquartered

00:50counterpart, OCS. So, Maxim FM was founded in 2010. It also has satellite offices in

00:56Glasgow, Bradford, and Swindon. Particularly strong customer base up in the north of England

01:00and Scotland, offering various facilities management services. So, commercial industrial

01:06cleaning, consumable supplies, hygiene, janitorial services, and the like. As part of that deal,

01:13OCS will take on 1,100 staff from Maxim FM. They'll all transfer over.

01:18Just transfer straight across.

01:20Good news for the staff there. Transition. It's also, I hope, that OCS will add to OCS's

01:27range of services. OCS itself is on the acquisition hunt at the moment. It's completed six acquisitions

01:34in the UK over the last 18 months. Most recently, back in December, that included Scottish firm

01:40FESFM. So, on the acquisition hunt, and probably want to keep an eye on for the future.

01:46Absolutely. I'm sure we will. There's a similar acquisition story in the Central East newsletter

01:52this morning. This is an asset leasing company called Dawson Group. It's headquartered in

02:00Milton Keynes, and they've been acquired by global investment firm KKR. Dawson Group has

02:06actually been in business in the region for about 90 years. I think in the 1930s it began

02:14in life, and today employs over 1,100 people across 11 countries, actually. The company's

02:21business model involves the customisation of assets to customer specifications. So,

02:30a great thing for them to be involved in, of course, as well as specialising in maintenance

02:34and repairs. Last year, Dawson Group posted record performance with Group EBITDA of £250

02:42million. The Dawson family has controlled the Group for more than 90 years, and with this

02:47strategic partnership, expected to significantly accelerate the decarbonisation of Dawson Group's

02:55vehicle and asset leasing services. And KKR, in its turn, will also help Dawson Group to implement

03:04an employee ownership scheme, which is obviously becoming more and more prevalent, I think,

03:10these days. I feel like we're hearing more and more of those. It's interesting to see

03:13they've already confirmed plans for that. Absolutely. Now, what's this news about in

03:18the Humber? It's a major development, isn't it? It's a development that we've covered previously.

03:23I think it's very well known in the Humber. You may well remember, in 2023, Metsitshu,

03:29which I believe is a Finnish company, agreed to deal with Whiteland, a property developer,

03:33which has a major presence in the Humber region, for a site at Humber Freeport. The two companies

03:39have now submitted a full planning application for what is going to be a large-scale tissue

03:43manufacturing plant, and that's gone through to each riding of Yorkshire Council within the last

03:48few weeks. The facility, when finished, would comprise about 3 million square foot of space.

03:54They're planning to build that over the course of a decade in four different phases. It would be

03:59able to produce 2,400 tonnes of tissue paper. Wow. They're also saying it should create up to 400

04:08direct jobs and help generate 26.5 million of GVA for the Humber region. Obviously,

04:15it's a huge scheme there and key for the Freeport itself.

04:18Yes, absolutely. A real major development for the region, for jobs, for that whole industry,

04:24I suppose. Yes, great to see it come forward at the next stage.

04:28Absolutely. We'll be following up, I'm sure, as the months and years go by.

04:33Should hopefully go through for the planning committee later this year.

04:37Talking of planning applications, a company called Cubex has submitted an application for

04:47student living scheme in the centre of Bristol. The plan should be moving forward today.

04:58Cubex submitted the application to Bristol City Council last year. This is for a 22-storey

05:06purpose-built student accommodation development on a brownfield site in the centre of Bristol.

05:13Alara Investments are the JV partner of Cubex. They will develop the site, which was actually

05:21bought by Cubex last February. It's been designed to what has been described as exemplar standards

05:28and is expected to have a gross development value of £150 million, so pretty significant.

05:36The City Council Development Committee has made the recommendation to support the scheme

05:42and give permission for the scheme to go ahead, subject, of course, to planning agreement,

05:47as all these things are. So lots of stories there. Some of them we just highlighted,

05:52but there are lots more on our website. If you go to insidermedia.com, you can read all about them

05:58and all our events and other activity that we've got going on. So please do go to that

06:05and have a look through. We'll see you again very soon. Have a good day.

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