The Blue Diamond Group beat three other bidders to successfully acquire Newbridge Nurseries in the first garden centre sale of 2015. The deal was completed on Thursday 29th January with the staff being told on Thursday night. Blue Diamond MD, Alan Roper, then spent Friday meeting the teams while the announcements were made to the press.
Earlier today GTN Xtra caught up with Alan who explained the freehold purchase of the Sussex centre from owner Nigel Wait, which takes the current number of Blue Diamond centres up to 17.
“The centres offer is very AB1 – just our (Blue Diamonds) sort of customer. There is an excellent restaurant, built by Jane Wait two years ago, that is already trading at £700k per annum and the planteria is extremely strong with a great team achieving £1.3m turnover.”
Located just outside Horsham, Newbridge Nurseries has current turnover of £4.9m. “There is planning permission in place to extend the shop, which is quite small for the size of centre at the moment. I see us developing it into an £8m to £9m turnover centre,” Alan explained. ”There are 11 acres of available land.”
As to the deal itself, Alan went on to say; “The purchase was secured with our commitment to Barnsfold Nurseries. This was a hotly fought after business with 4 companies bidding. It’s good to know that owners do have ideals when it comes to choosing who to sell to. We were up against 3 other interested parties and are pleased Nigel chose Blue Diamond.”
Nigel Wait is also a partner in Barnsfold Nurseries and that business has not been sold. “We have agreed to maintain the strong relationship between the garden centre and the nursery, especially when it comes to seasonal plants,” Alan continued.
“All our centres work with local bedding growers, so we will be able to extend the Barnsfold relationship to supplying Redfields, Bambridge Park and Wilton House centres.”
“I’m looking forward to returning to Newbridge on Monday to continue my meetings with the teams, explaining how we run our centres and the degree of autonomy we encourage.”
Asked about other developments across the Blue Diamond Group Alan explained that planning permission has gone in for the Leeds site they have been working on for 11 years, building works have started at Trelawney Wadebridge and David Danning told GTN Xtra when we met him at the GCA Conference that site clearing work was underway at Probus in advance of planning permission coming through.
And of the group’s flagship centre in Hampshire Alan reported: “Redfield’s traded really well through November and December after the opening of phase 2. With only word of mouth promotion customer numbers were up by 30%.”
