Knights Commercial Laundry sold to an Undisclosed Buyer
Divest Merge Acquire advised the owners of Knights Commercial Laundry in their successful sale to Private Consortium.
Knights was a 120 year old laundry based in Toowoomba. It’s owners of more than 20 years were looking to retire. This, plus the business outgrowing its original site following many equipment upgrades, prompted going to the market. The business had also undergone a period of rapid growth fuelled by the CSG development in the nearby Surat Basin. Buyer demand was widespread, including private equity groups, industry players and other local and overseas investors. The success bidders were among the 58 such interested parties.
Rigorous DD followed and a late transaction structural change from share to asset transaction helped keep the sale on track.
About Knights Commercial Laundry
Dear Tony As you are aware we have now completed the sale of Knights Laundry in Toowoomba, and we wanted to make a few comments about our relationship, in the hope that it will assist you in the future. Firstly, when we started to look for a broker to market Knights, the space seemed to be wholly occupied by spivs calling themselves grandiose names and lacking any accounting knowledge and having a commission rate of between 7-10%. You were introduced to us by our accountant and it was plain to us from the outset that Supertrac was a different organization. The accounting skills and expertise that went into the preparation of the IM were impressive, in fact when we read it we almost wanted to buy the business ourselves! The sales process dragged on for eighteen months and strangely enough one of the fIrst interested parties ended up buying Knights. We went through share sales, asset sales and seyeral pretty onerous DDs, Supertrac were always there for us. From time to time we would lash out and break the protocols and were quickly brought back into line, clearly there are a set of protocols which Tony knows backwards and he knows all the tricks that buyers get up to, to try to subvert the process. We shared many jokes together and became friends, however the real point of this letter is to thank Supertrac for a highly professional job, sometimes in diffIcult circumstances but always without fear or favour in our interests. Service is a rare commodity today and Tony and his staff provide an excellent sen-ice that we would recommend to anyone who wants to sell a reasonable sized business. Thanks for your help.