Completed yesterday (3 September), the deal has seen Schades’ Ripley-based UK subsidiary buy the entirety of Hamilton’s assets, including inventory, intellectual property and customer contracts, with no redundancies made.
The acquisition was completed on a tight timeline, with Hamilton filing notice of its intention to appoint administrators on 22 August. Once word reached Schades, the deal was complete within nine days, with Schades buying the firm from administrators Rochelle Schofield and Michael Dillon of Leonard Curtis.
The extent of Hamilton's financial difficulties are not yet clear, and notice of the administration had not yet been publicised on The Gazette or Companies House at the time of writing.
Jack Hugill, managing director of Schades UK, has taken on management of the 74-strong Hamilton team.
He told Printweek that Hamilton’s profile fitted perfectly with the Schades Group’s needs.
“We’re on the acquisition trail for label companies throughout Europe. We have a label company in France, and [in the UK] a paper roll-to-roll converting company in Ripley, where we also produce a significant volume of labels.
“With Hamilton being just 35 minutes down the road, it was a good fit: both in respect to the quality of labels that Hamilton can produce, and in the fact that their customer base is similar to ours.”
The Ripley site produces huge volumes of paper rolls for retailers throughout the UK, specialising in receipts and in-store labels; the group as a whole makes up the largest producer of receipt paper rolls in Europe at around €250m (£211m) turnover.
Hamilton’s most recent accounts, for the end of 2022, show a turnover of £18m.
The acquisition is consistent with Schades Group’s owner, Harbour Investment’s long-term strategy to transform the business and diversify its product offering, according to Jun Park, Schades Group’s CEO.
He said: “We are very pleased because the group is implementing a long-term transformation strategy to drive sustainable growth and the acquisition of Hamilton Adhesive Labels is a strategic fit, delivering significant synergies with our existing UK operations and strengthening the group’s label business capabilities. We made this acquisition through an exceptionally quick process with our own resource and strengths.”
The group plans to invest significantly for growth in the label market, according to Hugill.
“There are a number of staff who have been [at Hamilton] for 20, 30 years – we don’t want to lose that talent. Our intention is to retain as much of that staff basis as physically possible,” he explained.
“We plan to give Hamilton Schades all the investment it needs in the near future to become a very profitable and viable business.”
In the past four years, Schades has bought five wide-web label presses; in recent months, these have been supplemented with a 90mm rewind machine, and a 600mm plain label converter capable of 250m/min: awaiting installation is a 1.35m linerless converting line.
“We do everything quite quietly under the radar, but we’re very well invested,” Hugill added.
Schades employs around 60 at its Ripley site, turning over more than £40m annually.
Hamilton Adhesive Labels was founded in 1992, and operates from a 4,180sqm facility west of Leicester.
