Soho Square explores Alpine Fire Engineers sale

Clearwater has been appointed to run the sale process, which has yet to begin, two of the sources said.

The Manchester-based business, which provides services including design, project management and service and maintenance of active fire sprinkling systems, is expected to be marketed at around GBP 5m-GBP 6m EBITDA, two sources said.

Turnover has increased by 14% to GBP 25m while operating profit recovered to GBP 1.3m from GBP 222k operating loss during its financial year ending March 2021, according to its Companies House filing.

Alpine's management pinned the blame on 2020's loss due to the uncertainty caused by Brexit and the introduction of new tariffs, which has caused a short-term impact on its supply-chain and cost of steel-based products, it said in its filing.

But demand in its core project related markets continues to benefit from the structural shift from high street retail to online shopping, which it believes has been accelerated by the impact of the pandemic, according to the filing.

"Our strategic decision to focus on the food & beverage, automotive, aerospace & pharmaceutical warehousing & logistics sector is proving successful. We believe that the current momentum in the switch to online will continue to benefit our chosen sectors, and as such, we continue to invest in our overhead base as necessary to support the positive long-term sales outlook," it said in the filing.

The company has seen a strong demand from its contracted service offering where revenue has grown by 63% since 2019, and at the same time, the number of contracted sites has grown from 221 to 295 and are on target to reach 470 in the coming financial year, the filing said.

Soho Square Capital and Alpine Fire Engineers declined to comment. Clearwater did not respond to request for comment.

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