South African giant eats up catering company

A CATERING company that has turned chips into contracts with blue chip organisations has been swallowed up by a South African giant.

Servest has bought Tamworth-based Catering Academy for an undisclosed sum in a deal that has been more than a year in the making.

Catering Academy provides its catering management services to the business, education and healthcare sectors. It most recent accounts, for 2015, showed it made pre-tax profits of £1.3m on turnover of £33m.

Louise Wymer, who founded the business with Kevin Cannon, said: “We are excited to join forces with such an illustrious organisation in order to continue providing excellent service to our strong client base.”

Catering Academy was formed in 2004 and now employs more than 1,200 people. Its workforce will join the 50,000 people who already work for Servest worldwide, predominantly in Europe and Africa.

The food service and facilities management firm has a UK turnover of £240m, and plans to double its revenues from catering, to around £200m over the next three years.

Servest’s UK and European group chief executive Rob Legge added: “The acquisition of Catering Academy forms a part of Servest’s growth strategy and will help develop our already successful catering division.

“This decision demonstrates our commitment to boosting the group’s footprint in the education sector and will enable us to offer additional expertise to our clients.”