Amber Taverns seals £5m growth deal
A TRADITIONAL pub company – catering for football-loving male drinkers – has secured a £5m warchest to buy up to 30 more boozers.
Preston-based Amber Taverns is expecting turnover to grow from £18.5m to £25m this year as a result of its careful selection of sites, competitive pricing and high quality fit-outs.
Amber has secured a £4m revolving credit facility from Lloyds Bank Corporate Markets in Merseyside plus £1m in loan notes from LGV Capital (LGV), the private equity which took a majority stake in the business in October 2010.
The company currently has around 70 pubs in the North, Wales and Midlands believes growing the estate to 100 will take turnover to around £35m. The openings should allow the company to hire around 300 people in the coming months.
Amber’s strategy is centred on buying unloved ‘wet-led’ pubs and breathing new life into them through significant investment in AV equipment and its innovative agreement with its tenants.
Chairman Clive Preston told TheBusinessDesk.com: “Our customers are 80% male and are not interested in food – just drinks. Food is hard work and more and more pubs are doing it, meaning it’s getting more and more competitive.
“It’s much easier pulling a pint than doing burgers and chips – our customers don’t want the family crowd in, they want to be amongst themselves, having a pint and a chat and watching the football. We’re not catering for a niche market, but a major market.
“We have traded very well and one of the main reasons is that we can offer drinks for fairly modest prices in pleasant surroundings. We are incredibly picky about where we open our pubs – they have to be in the right locations with the right footfall and the right number of chimney pots.”
He praised Lloyds for its support for an “unloved sector.”
Tim Rigg, Lloyds Bank Corporate Markets area director, Merseyside, North Wales and West Lancashire added: ““We have been working with the Amber Taverns team for a number of years. Their ongoing success and growth is impressive, not least in the current economic climate.
“Their business success will undoubtedly have a ripple effect on the supply chain within the areas they operate in which is good news for the North of England. The provision of this latest funding facility demonstrates the bank’s commitment to supporting strong businesses in the North.”
Bill Priestley, a managing director at LGV said: “We were delighted to make a further investment in Amber to support the management team in its expansion plans.
“Since we first invested, this time last year, the business has gone from strength to strength and has made a number of successful acquisitions, whilst generating very healthy like-for-like sales growth in its mature estate.”
