Transtar deal will see firm stick to its roots

FREIGHT forwarding firm Transtar has been bought by its management in a deal backed by a fund designed to strengthen commerce and create jobs in South Yorkshire.

Lee Bolsover and Jayne Wilkinson, who have been at the firm for the past 10 years, secured an investment of GBP500,000 from the South Yorkshire Investment Fund (SYIF).

Transtar works with suppliers such as DHL to offer freight forwarding services throughout the world. The deal, for an undisclosed sum, was financed through a mix of loans and equity supported by a facility from Royal Bank of Scotland.

Mr Bolsover said: “The business has been a consistently profitable for the past several years and has the capacity to grow.

“If a sale to the MBO team had failed it is likely that Transtar would have been sold to an outside competitor and that might have meant that the business would have been lost to the South Yorkshire area.” The transaction is one of several deals closed by the SYIF which was launched earlier this year to provide development and risk capital ranging from GBP15,000 to GBP500,000 to businesses in, or prepared to relocate to, South Yorkshire.

Tony Goulbourn, SYIF chief executive, said: “We were keen to support the management team. They understand their marketplace and have already proved that they can grow a successful business.”