Member Article

Crawshaw Group placings set to raise £8.8 million as it eyes expansion

Rotherham butchers and meat retailers, Crawshaw Group, has announced that it has raised £8.82 million in two conditional placings, through WH Ireland Limited.

They raised the proceeds from the issue of 20,999,994 new ordinary shares of 5p each at a price of 42p per share.

The board of Crawshaw announced it is focussed on growing the business through identifying new profitable store locations and investing resources in a structured expansion programme.

The report said: “The plan is to accelerate our store opening programme throughout 2015 and beyond with a view to having an estate of 200 shops within 8 years.

“We are currently investing in a new processing and distribution centre in Rotherham to support the expansion. We expect the centre to be operational in the 4th Quarter of this year and that it will have capacity to service 60 locations.”

This new facility is ideally placed just off the M1 and will be used to service the initial new locations as it has the potential to cover areas such as the North West, the Midlands and the North East.

We have been opening varying sized stores in different locations over the last 5 years. We have learned a number of lessons and believe our new store model, with fit out costs below £250k, is the basis of a profitable roll out plan.

We intend to begin by recruiting a Chief Executive Officer with relevant experience to lead this exciting phase of our growth and to support Kevin Boyd who will remain our Managing Director.

We also believe that further investment will be required in a robust HR resource and to set up a in-house training and development centre to ensure that staff in each new store have the skills required to maintain the service and quality our customers expect.

The gross proceeds from the fundraising are to be used essentially to support the new store fit out, the further development of IT and logistics infrastructure and for working capital.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Clare Burnett .