Maidenhead: Wilson Partners provides DD on bio-bean investment
Wilson Partners Corporate Finance, based in Maidenhead, provided financial and tax due diligence for Gresham House on a £1.2 million investment in bio-bean, the world’s largest recycler of waste coffee grounds. The capital injection will further enable bio-bean to upgrade and expand its capacity in order to improve efficiencies and execute its business plan.
Bozkurt Aydinoglu, investment director at Gresham House and co-manager of the VCTs, said: “Bio-bean has a unique proposition and hard asset backing, meaning it fits very well within our existing sustainable investment portfolio. We look forward to seeing the fruits of the team’s labours as they build scale and diversify their product portfolio.”
Bio-bean recycles used coffee grounds into efficient, sustainable products for both consumer and industrial applications. This includes Coffee Logs, an eco product for wood burners and stoves that is quickly growing in consumer popularity and is stocked by several major UK retailers. bio-bean will now seek to expand product output considerably.
The investment will also help bio-bean, which is currently UK-based, to apply its successful model for recycling waste coffee grounds into mainland Europe, working in co-ordination with various international partners within bio-bean’s value chain.
Gresham House plc is a London Stock Exchange-listed specialist alternative asset management group (GHE.LN) that provides funds, direct investments and tailored investment solutions, including co-investment.
The Gresham House investment team remains on the look-out for new opportunities to put capital to work in the clean technology space, seeking to help the UK’s transition to a low-carbon economy.
Peter Griffiths, CFO at bio-bean, commented: “We’re delighted to welcome Gresham House as an investor into bio-bean. The financial commitment that Gresham House has made is a great endorsement of the hard-work put in by the entire bio-bean team to take our unique business model to scale. During the transaction, Wilson Partners were professional and straight-forward advisers to work with and made the financial due diligence process pain free, which was vital for us as a small company. We now look forward to putting the funds to work to grow the company into new product markets and geographies in an impactful manner.”
Tom Bradbury, senior manager at Wilson Partners, added: “Bio-bean is an exciting venture that utilises innovative technology to provide a market leading solution to coffee waste disposal. This transaction provides the opportunity to take the business to the next level and we look forward to seeing all that they achieve in partnership with Gresham House.”
