Cruising to success
When Graphite completed the buy-in, Sealine was a solid but slow-moving business. We backed a team with the right skills to transform an established UK business into one of the market leaders in Europe.
In June 1998 Graphite backed the £30 million buy-in of Sealine, one of the UK’s leading manufacturers of luxury motor cruisers. Sealine was bought from the founders who had set up the company over 25 years earlier. It had a well-established position in the UK and had sold its products overseas for many years, but its culture was still dominated by its manufacturing roots.
Graphite supported the management buy-in team’s strategy of changing that culture to one which was sales-led. By both updating and adding to the product range, the management team was able to expand the company’s overseas sales operations. As a result Sealine was successfully repositioned as a leading up-market manufacturer of boats in the European market.
Under Graphite's ownership, Sealine:
- invested substantially in its UK manufacturing base
- expanded and modernised the product range
- grew its overseas sales operations
- increased sales by 49 per cent and operating profit by 31 per cent
- strengthened its position as a leading player in Europe
In 2001 Sealine was sold for £49 million to Brunswick, a US boat manufacturer, generating an IRR of 33 per cent.
