Adare Group will be dissolved on 31 July, from which point Adare Secure Essential Communications (SEC) and print management arm Adare International will operate as separate entities.
Adare SEC will be headed up by newly appointed chief executive Richard Slee while Adare International will continue to be led by chief executive Andrew Dutton, who joined the business late last year. Current group chairman Robert Whiteside will become chairman of both businesses.
Whiteside said that he had planned to separate the two businesses since before UK private equity house Endless LLP became majority shareholder after a secondary MBO in April 2015. Endless will remain majority shareholder, with the rest of the shares still divided as before by the individual businesses.
Whiteside said: “The businesses could not be more different because of their strategies and different evolutionary directions and those strategies have been carefully planned and executed over a number of years that have taken them to this point.
“I’m not suggesting the Adare Group function got in the way, it was a very valuable asset to have, but the advantage is now they are separate and have their own separate teams and structures and strategies, and it allows them to focus on that without other bodies or entities above them. They are the captains of their own destiny.”
Whiteside added that the hiring of the two new chief executives had been “all part of the plan” in terms of upping the capability of the individual subsidiaries. He confirmed there would be no staffing restructures and no redundancies following the move.
“During the formative years they needed guidance, support and input from the parent group but we’ve invested heavily in these businesses, not least of all in their management arms,” he added.
Combined turnover for the two is set to be just shy of the £250m mark by the end of this financial year, £75m for SEC and £170m for International, with combined staffing levels at around 1,200 (600 each). The International arm benefitted last year from the acquisition of Banner Managed Communication (BMC), picking up roughly 80% of its £50m sales.
Adare SEC is currently in the process of closing BMC’s former Guildford site and relocating production to the Nottingham site it took on when it acquired Polestar Applied Solutions last year.
Whiteside said the relocation is still in a period of “phased transition” and will be for the next few months as clients' work is transferred over. The Guildford site is targeted to be fully closed by 31 October, with 35 due to be made redundant and another 14 given the option to transfer to Nottingham’s 86-staff facility.
Adare SEC currently operates from two other sites, in Huddersfield and Redditch, while International has headquarters in Basingstoke and offices UK-wide and globally.
