Dalepak, based in Northampton, is a leading provider of value-added logistics and e-fulfilment services, serving customers in beauty products, giftware and other sectors.
Sovereign Capital is a leading UK mid-market private equity house with over £900m of funds under management. Sovereign specialises in buy-and-builds and has delivered over 240 transactions since 2001.
Apex Insight carried out commercial, operational and IT due diligence to support the transaction. The work included quantifying the market opportunity for Dalepak, understanding its competitive advantages, evaluating the robustness of its business model, assessing the strength of its main operational processes and IT systems and drawing out implications for achievability of its forecasts. It also involved working effectively in partnership with HMT, who carried out financial due diligence.
Interviews with a broad range of Dalepak customers revealed that the company is seen to deliver a very high level of service which differentiates it from competitors. Other findings included:
– Dalepak’s markets offer it significant opportunity to continue to grow.
– The Dalepak Directors are highly regarded by clients for their logistics, IT and solution-design skills.
– The company’s ability to incorporate very specific requirements to create bespoke solutions matching its customers’ needs closely is seen to be a particular strength.
Trevor Stokes from Sovereign said:
“Apex Insight’s commercial due diligence work was very useful to us, to the banks and the management team because they were able to set out the critical questions for this deal and to answer them effectively. In doing this, their experience from having been part of an MBO team, as well as having advised on many similar situations, was invaluable.”
About Apex Insight
Apex Insight is an independent provider of research, analysis, commercial due diligence and other consulting services covering business services markets in the UK and Europe.
In addition to Dalepak, our recent work has covered markets including mail / parcels services, travel commerce, consumer credit services and television production.
