Cains Brewery takes over Honeycombe
Five years after buying Cains, the ambitious Asian brothers Sudarghara and Ajmail Dusanj have agreed a reverse takeover of pub operator Honeycombe Leisure to create a new business with 109 outlets and an annual turn-over of £65.5m.
The deal brings together Aim (Alternative Investment Market)-listed Honeycombe Leisure's estate of 100 managed pubs, concentrated mainly in the north-west, with the nine already operated by Cains, two of which are managed.
Sudarghara and Ajmail Dusanj, who take up the respective positions of chief executive and chief operating officer of the new business, have recruited Alan Mordue, formerly a senior member of the Charles Wells pub management team, as group operations manager.
Sudargahara Dusanj said: "Honeycombe needs a lot of work because it ran out of money. But it has fantastic sites and we'll be investing about £9m in the estate.
"We like the managed model - we just need to get our passion for beer transferred into the pubs."
Honeycombe has 25 freeholds and the rest are mainly free-of-tie. Some of the pubs may be taken up-market and tied to sell just Cains beer, but the rest are expected to sell a full range of products.
Sudarghara Dusanj said: "Significant synergies will be achieved by combining the two organisations. Our vision for the new group is to become Britain's favourite beer company.
"This latest deal puts Cains into a new league and will provide an excellent platform for business growth."
The takeover has been funded by Bank of Scotland Corporate in Liverpool in a deal worth £37m. The new Aim-listed business will be called Cains Beer Company and will be 57.65% owned by the Dusanjs.
Honeycombe's existing management team of chairman Sandy Anderson and chief executive James Baer will step down. The transaction is the first stock-market listing of a regional brewer since Belhaven Group came to the market in 1996.
Honeycombe suffered from an historic lack of investment in its estate and has been in takeover talks for the last year. It had previously received a preliminary approach from Anderson.
DUSanj family snapshots
l Sudarghara (Sid), 41, and Ajmail, 40, grew up in the Medway area of Kent
l Their father Surinder came to Britain in 1962, speaking no English. He worked with Laing building motorways, before running fish and chip shops and buying and selling homes
l They got their first commercial experience before they were 10, when father took them to estate agents to bargain on his behalf as his English was not good
l Ajmail looks after all internal operations; Sid takes care of all externals.Both their wives work in the business
