Leading Scottish timber frame company Scotframe Timber Engineering has bought the timber frame division of SL Timber Systems to create the third largest timber frame operation north of the border.
The acquisition, for an undisclosed sum, gives Scotframe an additional £4.5m of timber frame business to create a combined enterprise worth £21m a year. This puts the company behind Stewart Milne, which has a turnover approaching £30m, and Walker Timber with its £20m-plus sales base. Scotframe, which has made the acquisition with its own funds, also gets the Cumbernauld manufacturing base of SL and its 25 employees.
The move is designed to strengthen Scotframe’s hold on the central belt of Scotland where it is has a growing customer base of builders and developers.
Mr Edwards said: ‘Our geographical base is spreading all the time and there is now greater demand coming from the central belt. We felt that this was a cost-effective way of servicing the market there.’
The move will deliver a 30% increase in capacity for Scotframe, which has been unable to keep pace with demand in recent months.
Also, it will enable the company to keep to its six-to-eight week maximum lead time. Elsewhere in the industry builders endure lead times of up to 14 weeks, said Mr Edwards.
‘We really had more sales than we could cope with over the summer. This gives us another third which will give us the ability to keep pace with future rises in demand.’
Since 1999, Scotframe’s sales have risen by more than 300%.
