UK
K-Bro Linen has completed its previously announced acquisition of UK-based Star Mayan for a cash purchase price of £107.2 million. The acquisition, said K-Bro, will complement K-Bro’s existing UK businesses, Fishers and Shortridge, and creates a national footprint in the UK’s £1.6 billion commercial laundry and textile rental sector.
K-Bro is the largest owner and operator of laundry and linen processing facilities in Canada. K-Bro provides a comprehensive range of general linen and operating room linen processing, management and distribution services to healthcare institutions, hotels and other commercial accounts. K-Bro currently operates eleven processing facilities in eight Canadian cities: Québec City, Montréal, Toronto, Regina, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver and Victoria.
K-Bro in 2017 first entered the UK market with its acquisition of Fishers. Fishers was established in 1900 and is an operator of laundry and linen processing facilities in Scotland, providing linen rental, workwear hire and cleanroom garment services to the hospitality, healthcare, manufacturing and pharmaceutical sectors.
It subsequently acquired Shortridge which has operated as a family run business since the 1990s and is based in Cumbria, with plants in Workington, Dumfries and a distribution depot in Darlington.
Now, according to K-Bro, its focus has shifted towards integrating all three businesses to become the leading national UK platform.
The combined UK business will employ around 2,000 staff in peak season and will operate from a total of 17 UK locations, from Perth in the North to Central London in the South.
This will immediately make K-Bro a major player in the UK healthcare laundry sector and provide a platform from which to grow its existing hospitality, workwear and cleanroom businesses on a national scale.
When the announcement was made that K-Bro planned to acquire Star Mayan, K-Bro’s UK managing director, Michael Jones, said: “This is a major milestone for K-Bro. I’m proud to say that, in less than 10 years, K-Bro is growing from its roots as Canada’s largest commercial laundry company to become an international player. Our business in the UK will now have national coverage, with 17 sites and serving both healthcare and hospitality.
“But more than that, it is assembling a powerful team with the drive and expertise to build further on the platform that it is creating.”
