A deal has been agreed to see the construction group JRL acquire McMullen Facades, a company owned by the Lakesmere Group, which was recently placed into administration.
Lakesmere was well established as a building envelope specialist and a leading roofing, cladding and façade contractor working across the UK, as well as in various other parts of Europe and the Middle East.
The group’s turnover in the financial year 2013/14 reached £87 million and that figure was expected to top £100 million the following year once McMullen Facades was fully integrated into its operations.
However, the group, whose operating companies were Lakesmere Ltd, Lakesmere International and McMullen Facades, found itself faced with stiffening financial challenges over the course of recent months.
McMullen Facades is based in Northern Ireland and has a workforce numbering 270 people who operate out of facilities in Portadown and Moira.
All of the facades firm’s employees are expected to keep their jobs as ownership of the business transfers to the JRL Group, which is based in London and has offices in Manchester and the Midlands.
JRL describes itself as offering integrated construction services and owns a number of different construction sector businesses, including a crane hire company and a waste disposal operation.
“The acquisition of McMullen gives us the capability to offer a ‘structure and envelope’ package,” explained a spokesperson for the JRL Group.
“This will give clients a single point of contact to get a watertight building, whilst allowing savings on preliminaries, improved coordination, better programme and risk management benefits.”
The Lakesmere Group was officially entered into administration on November 4th 2017, with joint administrators from Deloitte appointed to manage the organisation’s financial affairs and its assets.
Peter Allen, one of those appointed administrators from Deloitte, said in a statement on the sale of Lakesmere’s Northern Ireland-based facades business that he was “delighted to have concluded the successful sale of McMullen, retaining all 270 jobs”.
“McMullen remains a profitable business that unfortunately was affected by cash flow issues in the wider Lakesmere Group. We wish it every success for the future,” he said.
A series of unprofitable contracts are understood to have been the primary source of financial difficulty for the Lakesmere Group in the months prior to its entry into administration.
