Park Holidays UK

Transaction Background

In January 2006 Graphite Capital led the £130 million management buy-out / buy-in of Park Holidays UK (formerly Cinque Ports Leisure), which owns and operates caravan holiday parks in southern England.   The previous owners founded the business 20 years before the buy-out and built it from a single park to 19 freehold caravan parks. One of the founders reinvested £19 million and is continuing on a part-time basis. The strategy is to develop the operations at the existing parks and to acquire additional parks.

Deal Attractions

Park Holidays offered the incoming management team the opportunity to apply disciplines from larger corporate caravan park operators and other leisure businesses to an attractive group of caravan parks with significant development potential. The caravan park sector, which has traditionally been led by family or owner managed businesses, is very fragmented with only 6% of the UK’s 1,500 parks in the control of the three largest corporate operators. This suggests scope for consolidation and operational improvement.