UK's containment equipment specialist Onfab has received £4 million growth capital investment from private equity investment manager Foresight. The money is to fund the acquisition of Envair, the Lancashire-based designer and manufacturer of clean air containment products.
Headquartered in Cheshire, northwest England, Onfab produces flexible clean air enclosures and consumables, designed and manufactured in-house from sites in the UK and Spain.
Founded in 2005 by Oliver Nulty, Onfab received investment from the £60 million Foresight Regional Investment LP fund in September 2017 to facilitate a majority buyout of the business.
Since then, with an enlarged team and renewed focus on sales, margins and new products, it has grown by over 30% per year and continues to benefit from ever-stricter safety standards protecting workers across the globe.
Envair is an established and well-recognised brand in the UK specialising in rigid clean-air products, with customers primarily in the healthcare sector.
The Envair portfolio of products and services include a range of rigid isolators, laboratory fume cupboards, consumables and ongoing maintenance.
Gary Bagshaw, Managing Director, Envair, added: “I have led Envair for over 10 years and watched the company grow every year. The combination of this business with ONFAB will allow us to expand our reach to a number of large markets while benefitting from ONFAB’s back office and sales infrastructure."
Rigid and flexible containment
Through the acquisition, Onfab aims to benefit from a highly complementary product and customer portfolio and will be the only UK provider of both rigid and flexible containment products and service, supporting customers in the healthcare, pharmaceutical and manufacturing markets.
“Though Onfab has thrived to date as a standalone manufacturer of flexible containment solutions, selling primarily into the pharmaceutical market, our management team recognised that combining our expertise with another organisation with a similar focus on customer service and quality could exponentially accelerate our growth," said Mark Arnold, Managing Director at Onfab.
Arnold concluded: "Envair’s success to date is a testament to their excellent management and a great range of rigid isolation products, and as a group, we will be able to offer more complex, bespoke, rigid and aseptic isolator solutions to a large and growing market."
