The firm offers a range of services including transactional print, hybrid mail, digital print and mail, digital document management, facilities management, and postal services.
FCS Laser Mail is headquartered in Birmingham and has a disaster recovery site in Ilkeston. The deal also includes a majority stake in a specialist software business, FSC Software based in Gloucester, which focuses on local government electoral management.
The MBO team was led by managing director Steve Beeching, along with technical services manager and now director Lee Mcdonald, head of sales Jodie Smith and production manager Daniel Williams.
Beeching said the opportunity for an MBO came after the previous working owners took something of a back seat due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“This ultimately allowed experienced middle managers to flourish and put into practice a number of ideas, which helped achieve a 40% revenue growth over a three-year period,” he explained.
“We are lucky to have an exceptional team who really are second to none, we are an extended family, we work extremely hard and we look after each other.”
Former CEO Michael Fay and COO Kevin Williams, who were involved with the original buyout of Facilities & Corporate Solutions from National Freight Corporation in 1996, will continue to act as consultants to the business.
Beeching added: “We really couldn’t be more excited about the future – we have just celebrated the company's 28th birthday, which proves the company was built on very solid foundations, Michael and Kevin have handed the company over in an extremely healthy position.
He said the MBO team has set aggressive growth and service level targets for the future, “with technology-based communication services an area we really want to attack”.
However, he also noted that the firm’s focus was not about being the biggest, but the best.
Beeching said the team had already decided on their first investment. A new Bluecrest Vantage sorter that is due to be installed mid-October. The circa-£700,000 device will replace an old Pitney Bowes Olympus Sorter and will bring numerous advantages to the business.
“The new sortation machine will allow us to make huge efficiencies both in IT and production. We worked closely with Bluecrest with regards to our specific requirements, and the new machine will include a number of proprietary dynamic features which will drastically reduce pre-processing time, which can only help us meet ever increasing demand from clients for time sensitive SLA’s and help mitigate postage price increases incurred by our clients.”
Current recruitment plans included additional people in sales and IT – “potentially the next generation of staff who themselves will perform an MBO in years to come”, Beeching said.
The firm employs 60 and had sales of around £15m in the 2022/23 financial year.
Picture shows, left to right: Beeching, Williams, Mcdonald and Smith.
