Funding extended for South West marina property group ahead of targeted disposals
Waterfront regeneration specialist Sutton Harbour is to borrow a further £740,000 while it awaits agreement on a number of property disposals.
The group, which owns and operates Plymouth’s historic Sutton Harbour, told shareholders last December that it was hopeful of agreeing a deal to sell the city’s King Point Marina by last month as part of its need to “reduce debt to a manageable level”.
It sold three properties last autumn, enabling it to make loan repayments of £1.45m. Its bank debt at that time remained above £20m but it said had a target of reducing this to £11.8m by the end of its financial year in March.
Sutton Harbour told shareholders in December it had “received good interest” in all of the assets it was targeting to sell in the following three months.
King Point in Millbay, designed and built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel in 1857, has been reopened as Plymouth’s newest marina with berthing for 151 boats.
Now in a further update, Plymouth-based Sutton Harbour – which is listed on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM market – has said the loan extension would give it additional headroom in its cash resources until the targeted property disposals were completed.
The additional loan extends an existing unsecured loan from Beinhaker Design Services first announced on just under a year ago and updated in December.
The extension constitutes a related party transaction for the purposes of the AIM rules, as Beinhaker Design Services represents 56% of the holdings of FB Investors, which has a 75.38% holding in the company and is controlled by the Beinhaker family.
FB Investors initially bought a 70% stake in Sutton Harbour in January 2018. At the time Philip Beinhaker was appointed a non-executive director and non-executive chairman of the firm. Corey Beinhaker was appointed chief operating officer in October 2019.
FB has since increased its stake in Sutton Harbour, which also owns Plymouth Fisheries, one of England’s top three fish markets.
