Further investment pledge by BGF after record year of exits
Investor BGF has marked a record year of exits and has pledged to invest more in 2022 with a pipeline of deals already progressing.
In the North West, BGF injected £70m into high growth businesses across 2021 and successfully exited five businesses in the region, including Kids Planet, having supported the nursery group’s rollout from 17 to more than 80 sites.
BGF also announced a successful exit of NSS, as the business was acquired Premier Technical Services Group Ltd (PTSG) as well as CurrentBody – the world’s largest provider of clinically proven beauty devices for home use, which sold a £50m majority stake in the business to eComplete.
The team has backed five new businesses in the last 12 months, as well as providing follow-on funding to existing portfolio businesses.
New investments include a £15m investment into Preston-based hybrid cloud and IT managed services provider, Celerity, as well as £7.5m in Lancashire e-commerce logistics and tech company, Fulfilmentcrowd.
This followed the £4 million investment into double Queen’s award-winner, DriveWorks – the Warrington-headquartered company, which works with manufacturing and engineering businesses to provide innovative software solutions.
Neil Inskip, Head of BGF in the North West, said: “We’re extremely fortunate in the North West to have an abundance of excellent entreprenuerial companies that are defying the current challenges, and committing to ambitious growth plans.
“We expect strong investment activity across the region to continue into 2022 and have a good pipeline with new investments and exits already well progressed.”
Neil Inskip
He added: “We’re confident the region’s businesses have the growth potential, talent, and appetite to make 2022 another standout year, and we’re excited about supporting them on that journey.”
Across the UK and Ireland, BGF invested £600m over the course of 2021 and completed 39 portfolio exits – a record year for the fund.
