The duo behind wound care and dermatology business Crawford Healthcare has launched an investment company to help other healthcare businesses replicate their success.
Impel Healthcare Catalysts, headquartered in Knutsford, said it would initially concentrate on investing in companies with values up to £50m, with the capability to co-invest with other debt and equity funders.
It comes after Richard Anderson and Spencer Kerry sold Cheshire-based Crawford Healthcare to US firm Acelity, the biggest wound care company globally, for $126m in June 2018.
Crawford grew from a small company in 2009 to an international organisation with 150 employees, which broke the US healthcare market and achieved revenue of more than £30m.
Mr Anderson told BusinessLive: “When we sold the business we made a significant amount of money but we’re all still young and we wanted to go again so we figured out what could we do to replicate the Crawford story in a number of companies ideally focused in the north west.”
Mr Kerry said: “The key is to identify innovation and translate that innovation into commercialisation and that’s where we come in. Where we can identify the right innovation and ultimately turn that into products and brands.”
Mr Kerry said Impel is looking to invest in healthcare companies that want expertise as well as resources, due to their background.
He said: “Quite often the companies we’re speaking to either are not interested in doing a deal with a classic private equity funder or the private equity funder might not be interested in them for a host of reasons.”
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Mr Anderson added: “The north has a great number of private equity houses but if you’ve got people that have done this previously and recently, that might make us better partners for small and growing companies...so there’s more of a willingness to work with us.”
Mr Anderson said, while there are many investors in the north west, very few are absolutely focussed on healthcare.
He said: “We think it’s quite a niche that we’re northern based, we’ve been there and done it before, we’ve built a healthcare company for a great return.”
While Impel said it wouldn’t turn down investing in businesses based in other parts of the 海角视频, Mr Anderson said it had a northern bias.
He said: “We are based in the north, we’re proud to be based in the north and we can tap into the science base and the pharmaceutical industry was initially developed in the north.
“There’s a great heritage around here, there’s a great talent pool of people who were with AstraZeneca who didn’t want to move down to the south, so we can tap into some of these people.
Mr Kerry added: “There’s science, there’s tech here and we do have strong northern values, we just get things done and we speak bluntly and openly and I think those northern values come through in the success of Crawford.
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“If we can replicate the success of Crawford into other northern companies, then we’ll have fantastic returns for both the employees and the shareholders.”
The pair said they are due to announce its first deal “very quickly”, which they are currently negotiating.
Mr Anderson said: “It’s got a very strong northern bent and we’re very excited about that, it’s going to be a very significant investment and the company valuation is well over £10m.”
Impel said they hope to invest in five companies in different stages of development over the next 24 months.
“We’d like to see that portfolio, help support that and then look from then on to see how we can grow out the organisation and go onto further investments, but we’ll focus on that small number initially,” Mr Anderson added.