Inprova Group announces its latest acquisition

Paul Kennedy

Inprova Group, the Warrington-based procurement outsourcing service company with a turnover of more than £15m, has bought non-domestic energy consultancy Energy & Carbon Management (E&CM) for an undisclosed sum.

E&CM, which is based in Horsham, West Sussex, provides energy broker and consultancy services, such as commercial gas and electricity procurement, energy risk management and consumption measurement and analysis.

The company’s 20 staff will continue to be employed by Inprova Group. The deal, which has been funded through a new debt facility from Frontier Development Capital, completed last week.

Inprova provides procurement outsourcing, consultancy and technology services across the private and public sector, procuring £800m worth of goods and services per year for clients in the logistics, private equity, health, local government and housing markets.

The company is pursuing a strategy of regular acquisitions.

The latest deal will continue to strengthen Inprova’s energy procurement offer, and its position as one of the UK’s top 10 non-domestic energy Third Party Intermediaries (TPIs).

Paul Kennedy, Inprova Group chief executive, said: “I am delighted to welcome the E&CM team into the group.

“I have been really impressed by the culture and approach to service quality demonstrated by E&CM during the process – factors which remain crucial to success in this market. There is a compelling opportunity to accelerate the growth by augmenting the services that will be available to the E&CM customers now they are part of Inprova.”

“The addition of E&CM builds upon the success of the acquisitions made in this space over the last couple of years. We have now made 5 acquisitions in the past couple of years or so and we continue to look at opportunities that will add scale, capacity and capability into our business over the coming months and years.”

The most up to date accounts for Inrprova for the year ended June 30, 2016, show revenue of £15.158m and pre-tax profits of £718,010, up from £496,000 in the prior year.

Advisers on the transactions were Beyond Corporate (legal), Dow Schofield Watts (debt advisory and financial due diligence), PMSI (commercial due diligence) and KPMG (tax).

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