Background

Edwin James was Aliter’s first investment – made just after our fund launch in 2017.

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Edwin James operates five key businesses: Midlands-based PEME; Staffordshire-based Parker; Musk, in Derbyshire; Ingen Technical Services, in Central Scotland; and Korrie, which is based in Inverness. Together they provide a broad range of technical services to customers throughout the UK.

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Ingen and Korrie were part of Edwin James when we made our initial investment.

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How we've helped

Shortly afterwards, in April 2017, we funded Edwin James’s acquisition of Parker, a family-owned mechanical, electrical and process engineering business with an established blue-chip customer base, principally in the Midlands.

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Parker has deep expertise in providing engineering support to the public and private sectors, particularly in the manufacturing, food and retail industries; as well as a growing facilities support services operation. Following our investment, the family owners of Parker exited the business completely.

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Towards the end of 2017, in November, Edwin James acquired PEME, an outsourced reliability maintenance services company that provides electrical and mechanical plant and asset maintenance to large UK and European manufacturers.

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In June 2019, Edwin James made a fourth acquisition in a full-service engineering business, Jex Engineering. Shortly after, a fifth investment was made. Peak42 Limited specialises in control and automation technology with core expertise in system integration, consultancy and performance management.

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These acquisitions have expanded Edwin James’s geographical footprint and created a business with combined revenues of c.£140m and over 1,000 staff. As a national technical services provider, Edwin James is able to offer an impressive range of service offerings, with mechanical, electrical, energy and process engineering capabilities delivered through a highly skilled direct workforce covering the whole of the UK.

 

Strategy

In all of the businesses, the focus is on helping customers develop, manage and maintain their critical technical environments and assets.

 

Aliter’s partners have a wealth of experience in technical services and our goal is now to build a major new national player in the sector. To help realise that ambition, we recruited Derek Smith as CEO in November 2017. Derek has broad experience in the sector, having worked with a number of the Aliter team at Stiell, McAlpine and ASCO, as well as being CEO of Ramco, the oil and gas services business. 

 

In early 2022, Derek became chairman of Edwin James and the company's then Chief Operating Officer, Christpher Kehoe was appointed CEO. Christopher brings 25 years experience to the role, with a strong track record of driving sustainable, profitable growth in challenging outsourced services environments and a depth of knowledge of working across complex, regulated, high security industries. Prior to joining Edwin James, he was Group Executive Director at EMCOR Group Inc.