Pentland sold for £2m to scaffold group

SHS Integrated Services has acquired Doncaster-based Dixon Pentland Scaffolding Company in a £2m deal.
Paul OldhamPaul Oldham
Paul Oldham

Dixon Pentland, which has an annual turnover of £5m and whose clients include AMEC, Babcock and Balfour Beatty, is a provider of scaffolding services to the energy and heavy industrial sectors. The company employs 65 people.

Barry-based SHS, which provides high specification industrial scaffolding and associated services, financed the acquisition following investment totalling £5.4m made in September last year by BGF, the growth capital investors backed by five of the UK’s main banking groups – Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, RBS, and Standard Chartered.

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Founded in 1998 by Paul Smith, SHS erects and dismantles large-scale, technically demanding scaffolding structures for clients in the petrochemical, oil and power generation sectors. It also provides complementary insulation services.

Dixon Pentland represents the first acquisition that SHS has made using BGF capital. The opportunity was introduced to SHS by Grant Thornton Corporate Finance in Cardiff, which also advised on the transaction.

Finance director, Gavin Payne, who led the deal on behalf of SHS, said: “This is an important step for SHS. Dixon Pentland’s reputation and customer base is a great fit with SHS, opening up new markets and enabling us to provide an even more complete service to our customers.

“We shall be continuing to work with Grant Thornton and BGF to identify potential further acquisitions to complement and extend our offering in what is a highly-specialised market.”

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Dixon Pentland specialises in work in the critical services sector, for example providing scaffolding services to the power line and transmission industry. The company’s specialist work for customers such as National Grid is complementary to SHS’s own activities on petrochemical and utilities sites.

Tax advice on the deal was handled by Simon Jones, from KPMG, and legal advice provided by Andrew Morris and Martyn Davies at Geldards, all of whom are based in Cardiff.

Paul Oldham, BGF’s regional director for South Wales and the South West of England, said: “SHS was the first company in Wales that BGF has backed and our investment was made in order to strengthen the company’s core capabilities, develop a broader range of services and expand into new sectors and geographies.

“Dixon Pentland is a highly complementary acquisition given its reputation in the industry as a well-established, high quality operator and will add considerably to the range of services that SHS is able to offer its clients.”

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