Purchase solidifies presence in healthcare and testing markets
Limerston Capital, the UK mid-market private equity investment firm, has completed the acquisition of Source BioScience’s Stability Storage business, underlining its commitment to the healthcare, testing and certification sectors. The newly created standalone company will be called Astoriom (“the company”) and will allow the company to focus on biorepository as its core growth area, expanding its footprint within high-value pharmaceutical and biologic markets with a buy-and-build growth strategy in the US and European markets.
Headquartered in Rochdale (UK), Astoriom has 33 employees. The company offers storage, manufacturing and service and validation for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, contract manufacturers and analytical testing companies across the globe, with a strong presence across the UK, Ireland and the USA.
Astoriom’s core service line is outsourced temperature and humidity-controlled environment storage services for stability trials, retained samples and long-term storage of biologic samples. This is an essential part of the drug development process allowing new products to be evaluated under a variety of critically controlled conditions.
The Astoriom leadership team will include Philip Bradley, who has eight years with the business and will remain as General Manager, with a focus on day-to-day operations.
The deal is Limerston’s fifth platform deal in the life sciences space and third platform deal in its second fund, Limerston Capital Partners II. Limerston has already developed its portfolio in adjacent markets, with a strong track record within the pharmaceutical and medical device testing markets, as well as with drug discovery, development and manufacturing. Its most recent acquisition was in April with Concept Life Sciences, an established Contract Research Organisation.
João Rosa, Founding Partner, Limerston Capital commented: “We see enormous potential in the stability storage sector. Astoriom is a very secure business with a great team. Geographically its sites are well spread, it has a broad customer base and an excellent reputation making it well-placed to grow and we are already looking at potential acquisitions, particularly in the United States where there are very few specialist players.
“We are looking forward to working with Phil and his highly capable team to leverage the success of the business to date, growing its presence in target sectors especially bio-storage and the pharmaceutical market.”
Phil Bradley, General Manager of Astoriom said: “Limerston Capital will be an excellent partner for our business, allowing us much greater commercial focus as we operate independently. We look forward to working with their team of hands-on operating partners to help guide us in realising the enormous growth potential now available to us.”
Jay LeCoque, Chairman and CEO of Source BioScience, commented: “We believe Limerston is perfectly poised to realise the opportunity for Astoriom to thrive under new leadership whilst allowing Source to focus further investment in its core laboratory services businesses.”
Limerston Capital is a private equity firm targeting UK businesses with EBITDA of between £5 million and £15 million. It partners with management teams to help build them into industry leaders through buy-and-build and operational transformation.
Source BioScience delivers pharma biotech services, specialising in clinical diagnostics including cellular and digital pathology, genomics and multiomics.
Ends
For more information, please contact:
Martim Avillez, Limerston Capital Founding Partner
martim.avillez@limerstoncap.com +44 (0)203 897 1860
Media:
Caroline Villiers cvilliers@keplercomms.com +44 (0)7808 585184
Charlotte Balbirnie cbalbirnie@keplercomms.com +44 (0)7989 528421
About Limerston Capital
Founded in 2015 by James Paget, João Rosa and Martim Avillez, London based Limerston Capital pursues control investments in UK mid-market companies and seeks to create value through the firm’s buy-and-build and operationally focused model. The firm targets businesses with EBITDA of between £5 million and £15 million that have a solid value proposition, but have potential for operational improvements, have mispriced underlying returns on capital and provide opportunities for strategic repositioning via consolidation.