The Inchinnan, Renfrewshire-based firm's new business development director, Newton Keenan, said that the new management team is in the process of looking at an acquisition to add a different skillset to the business, which should be completed in 2017.
The family business was purchased in a £6.5m buyout, led by former ACA employee Joseph Keenan and local businessman Dara Changizi, who have each taken a 44% stake in the business. The remaining 12% of the company’s shares were bought by six members of staff who have remained with the company. The acquisition completed on 1 November 2016.
Changizi and Joseph and Newton Keenan started negotiations more than a year ago with ACA’s former owner Alex McCready, who Newton Keenan said was “semi-proactively looking for a buyer”.
RBS provided £2.95m of the capital through a combined loan and invoice finance package, while the rest was raised through a Lombard hire purchase agreement and from the investors. Acquisition specialist Theseus Ventures advised on the deal.
Joseph Keenan has been in the print industry for a number of years and has also worked for J Thomson Colour Printers and SCA Packaging in Scotland. Changizi has headed up a number of local businesses and Newton Keenan, who has no stake in the business, was previously in corporate IT.
“ACA as a business had been going and established for 35-plus years and had a fairly solid reputation of doing pretty much every process under one roof,” said Newton Keenan.
According to Newton Keenan, the BIMBO team felt the business offered significant potential for growth.
“We felt there was an opportunity there because the business wasn’t being run as well as we thought it could have been run and wasn’t proactive in the market.
“Since we’ve come in, we’ve got under the roof and identified three key areas for improvement immediately: one being health and safety, the other quality and the third investment.”
“January was our biggest year on record, which was a real positive,” he added.
ACA is currently applying for ISO 19001 and BRC certification, and is working closely with Scottish Enterprise to to get through the processes, which should complete by the end of June. It is also working with Scottish Enterprise on recruiting additional skilled staff from the local area.
ACA has 80 staff and had sales of £3.8m for the year ending 31 August 2016. It runs a variety of equipment in its 6,000sqm premises, including folding and stitching lines, perfect binding and foiling.
