A management-led employee buyout team has succeeded in its bid to buy housebuilder Persimmon’s Beazer Partnerships and Torwood timber frame businesses for £4.7m.
The buyout – led by Beazer managing director John Cadwallader and finance director David Hodson – will result in Beazer’s social housing offices covering Wales and the West Country, the south-east and the Midlands, plus Torwood’s factories at Livingstone and Ipswich being transferred to a new business called Belan Ltd.
Funding for the deal – worth £13m and first predicted in TTJ (July 21/28) – has come from the Bank of Scotland and Kier Group plc.
The Beazer business, which has a public sector order book of £50m, is being renamed Partnerships First to reflect its social housing role. Torwood will continue to operate factories at Ipswich and Livingston.
Partnership First will employ 120 and Torwood 130.
John Cadwallader, chief executive of Belan, said the prospects of both businesses ‘looked very positive’.
He added: ‘Funding for social housing is higher than it has been for many years and the market share for timber frame homes in the private sector is increasing steadily.’
Belan believes it will benefit from hikes in government funding for social housing, set to rise by 26% over the coming three years from £3.68bn in 2001/02 to £4.65bn in 2003/04.
Among the contracts the Belan business carries forward is one with Persimmon to supply timber frames until 2004 and another that is being finalised with the Amphion housing association consortium for up to 600 homes during 2001.
Richard Finlinson, chairman of Amphion, said: ‘I am delighted that, at long last, this has happened. Full marks to John Cadwallader for holding the whole thing together for such a long time. Our technical team will meet soon to discuss our next projects.’
