Stafford-based Lodge Tyres bought by Halfords for £37.2m
Halfords Group has bought Stafford-based Lodge Tyre for £37.2 million.
Lodge Tyre is a well-established business in the UK commercial tyre market, providing automotive services to business-to-business customers from 50 garages and 248 mobile vans.
The Acquisition takes the Halfords garage services business to 656 garages, 253 consumer vans, 440 commercial vans and nine warehouses.
Redditch-based Halfords will pay £33.m on completion with a further £4m to be paid in 2024-2025 subject to performance.
The directors of the group believe that the acquisition is both strategically and financially compelling, delivering on Halfords' objective of further evolving into a business more heavily weighted towards motoring services.
Post completion on an annual basis, services revenue will account for around 48 per cent of group revenues,
Graham Stapleton, chief executive of Halfords, said: "The acquisition of Lodge Tyre is yet another example of Halfords’ strategic aim of becoming a motoring services-focused business, and will mean that motoring accounts for over three-quarters of our total revenue. The current trading environment reinforces the rationale for building ever-more resilient, needs-based revenue streams, which is exactly what the motoring category offers. Within that, the nature of the commercial tyre market means that it is non-discretionary and therefore extremely well insulated against macroeconomic uncertainty.
"Lodge is an outstanding operation that perfectly complements our existing commercial tyre businesses of McConechy’s and Universal Tyres, and gives us a much greater reach across the UK. We were already the UK’s market-leading Motoring Service provider to consumers, and this acquisition will also make us the UK’s largest commercial tyre provider. We look forward to welcoming the Lodge team to the Halfords family.”
Lodge Tyre date back to 1935. It employs more than 400 and has a warehouse in Birmingham. It provides on-demand and emergency coverage across the Midlands, East Anglia, North Wales and the North West.
It infills areas of the UK where Halfords’ cCommercial business has had less representation.
Lodge Tyres’ existing shareholders Andrew Christmas, Martyn Lodge and Simon Christmas will remain in the business on employment contracts as members of the Lodge senior management team.
