3 February 2012
Servest Group UK is aiming for turnover of around £84 million by year-end in September, boosted by the acquisition of Turners Cleaning and Support Services.
The target in the longer term, over three years, is to hit the £150 million to £200 million mark, said Stuart Buswell, managing director of the commercial and public sector division of Servest Group UK.
It’s an ambitious target, but it looks highly possible, said Buswell in an exclusive interview with
FM World.
The target will be met “through a combination of acquisitions and organic growth, but with it weighted more towards acquisitions”, he said.
Immediate focus for Buswell is the integration of Turners which Servest bought last October. The deal increased group turnover at the time by around a quarter to £70 million.
The Turners acquisition, along with good contract and employee retention, ensures a solid foundation for organic growth, said Buswell, whose early career was in retail sales and management.
Buswell left school at 17 – “sixth form just wasn’t for me” – and started working at a local Texas Home Care Store. By 19 he was the youngest store manager in the company’s history, working in Coventry. He also handled the integration of a small business into Texas Home Care, something which has proved very useful.
By the age of 25 he was managing a Habitat store in his adopted city of Cardiff, eventually becoming a regional manager for the South-West.
He left Habitat in 1995 simply because he wanted a ”different challenge”, he said, and joined the small Cardiff-based Amalgamated Cleaning Services as operations director. It was his first taste of the support services sector.
There followed stints at cleaning business Barkland and a brief 10-month project contract with OCS before moving to Ecocleen in 2008.
Ecocleen was in the process of being bought and rebranded by major South African support services business Servest so his integration skills learned at Habitat came in handy, he said. They were further put to use later in 2008 when Servest bought Sherwood, a provider of on-site support services to blue-chip businesses and public sector organisations.
The Sherwood purchase was a good base for creating Servest UK’s commercial and public sector division that sits alongside its slightly larger-by-revenue sister division for retail.
Servest UK is 70 per cent owned by Servest in South Africa and 30 per cent by the UK directors. The business adds between 10 and 12 per cent of Servest’s global turnover.
Buswell’s division brings in about 40 per cent of total UK revenue. But operating margins can be greater in the commercial and public sector than in retail, he said.
His bold prediction on the UK revenue increase is partly based on good contract retention. Around 85 per cent of contracts in the commercial and public sector division have been running for at least five years. Through Ecocleen, the Science Museum in London has been a client since 1995 and Leicestershire County Council since 2001.
Servest Group UK now has around 8,500 employees. It self-delivers most cleaning services and subcontracts others, including security, waste management and catering.
“But we’re going to be building our self-delivery lines,” he said. “This is being driven by our clients, many of whom are local authorities and want a more of a one-stop-shop supplier.”
Servest is hoping to challenge major players like Mitie and Compass, said Buswell. The key is being able to provide several self-delivery lines.
Self-delivery also enables a competitiveness when Servest bids for bundled services, which is becoming more acceptable by local authorities as they streamline their supply chains, he said.
Other news for Friday, 3 February 2012
Servest bullish over acquisitions
Property managers see 5 per cent salary boost
Keepmoat clears the decks for merger
OCS moves into the fast lane
Contracts round-up
FM World launches 2012 Salary Survey
FM World Blog: One is such a lonely number
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