Scanwel Group

I'm Greg Easter. I'm a partner at Heligan Group, and as part of the investments team, I'm the investment director on our investment in Scanwel Group. I oversee working with that management team and the investors in the business on a day-to-day basis.

So Scanwel Group's a manufacturer and distributor of scientific instrumentation. It manufactures and sells on behalf of other OEMs, a range of scientific components, which predominantly supply into the scientific research, scientific instrumentation, and other markets globally.

Scanwel operates in really interesting end markets, all of which are experiencing high levels of growth at the moment. So its products go into the semiconductor industry, into the clean energy sector, into nuclear, and into a number of other markets such as scientific research that's receiving high levels of funding from government, but also the commercial sector. So the business is experiencing high levels of demand from its customers and as a result, has big opportunities for growth in the future.

So the key challenges for Scanwel in such a high-growth market is trying to find good people to grow the business at scale. We've helped the business in achieving that by opening up different areas of the country and making acquisitions that provide them with access to skilled labor. That's been a struggle in its core business.

The support provided by Heligan so far has enabled Scanwel to access new markets with one of the recent acquisitions, a business called Project Ena, which was previously another Heligan portfolio company. So the next phase of growth for Scanwel is all about embedding a couple of recent acquisitions and then shifting into further organic and inorganic growth. So we've helped them in recent times make these acquisitions. We'll continue to help them with the post-acquisition integration. Beyond that, there's a number of other opportunities that we will help to execute. We'll also help them with their organic growth strategy, challenging the management team, being a critical friend on the way. I think the thing that CEOs and founders most appreciate from working with Heligan is that we've been in their position. We're not simply investors or financially-focused individuals. We bring a team with a range of backgrounds. We've worked within businesses, within government organizations, so we really understand what things are like. We roll our sleeves up, build good relationships, build their trust. When things get difficult, we're patient, and we work with them, and when they're going well, we help them to continue fueling the growth of their business.