Which store will Wyevale Garden Centres buy next? How deep are the pockets of the financial backers behind the industry's largest garden centre owner? When will it all end? These are questions being asked on an almost daily basis as the garden trade acknowledges that WGC will continue to snap up more centres in the forseeable future.
Wyevale Garden Centres took its portfolio to 143 with the acquisitions of Trelawney Ashford in Barnstable and Raglan in Monmouthshire recently.
GTN Xtra has heard rumours this week that more acquisitions are in the pipeline but when approached the company has always declined to comment. Quite understandable really, given the complex and delicate negotiations that take place during the sale of any business.
Guy Hands, the boss of Wyevale's owners Terra Firma, recently told the London Evening Standard: “We tend to go for businesses where there’s a strong transformational element to them. Something like The Garden Centre Group (rebranded Wyevale Garden Centres in the summer) is a good example of that where we’ve moved it from being plant- and horticultural-based to making it more like a leisure company.
“We’re two years into it, earnings have doubled and the management team believe they can double earnings again over the next three or four years, so the business is doing very well.”
Those last six words – "the business is doing very well" – suggest that Terra Firma might stick around for a bit longer and allow the management team to increase the size of the portfolio, which should then fetch a tidy sum when the renowned deal-maker finally decides to sell Wyevale Garden Centres.
