Kitwave Wholesale Group has added an eleventh company to its group, following the acquisition of Angelbell Limited (Hulleys Frozen Foods). The acquisition complements last year’s takeover of another Frozen Food wholesaler, Eden Farm.
David Brind,group finance director of Kitwave Group, said: “The acquisition of Hulleys Frozen provides an exciting opportunity for the Kitwave Group, which will provide additional customers, products and services to our existing offering. In addition to the acquisition earlier this year of Squirrels UK the Kitwave Group now has developed operations across the growing sectors of discount retail, foodservice and frozen product. ”
Hulleys is a family business that has been trading for more than 80 years. It has a complementary product portfolio, being made up predominantly of ice-cream and a wider frozen food offering. Hulleys operates from six depots supplying a delivery network distributing across the whole of England.
Newcastle based Kitwave was established in 1987 as an acquisition vehicle set up to purchase independent wholesale businesses. NVM Private Equity (NVM) supported Kitwave in 2011 with GBP7.5m of investment to support its acquisition strategy. Paul Young (Kitwave’s Group Managing Director), David Brind (Group Finance Director) and their team have since acquired Anderson Wholesale, Automatic Retailing, Teatime Tasties, Eden Farm, Squirrels UK and now Angelbell Limited.
Mauro Biagioni, Partner at NVM Private Equity, comments: “The addition of Angelbell by the Kitwave Group will serve to complement Kitwave’s existing portfolio of businesses. The success of previous acquisitions proves that Kitwave’s growth strategy is going exactly to plan since we invested four years ago and this latest addition will only strengthen this further. Paul and the team are keen to make further acquisitions across their industry to continue to grow in a fragmented market.”