Enotria
Enotria
(Image credit: Enotria)

UK wine importer Enotria has been taken over in a £25m management buyout.

Private equity fund BlueGem Capital Partners, alongside CEO Alison Levett and the Enotria management team secured £25m debt finance from Investec Growth & Acquisition Finance for the acquistion.

Enotria was founded in 1972 by Remo Nardone, to import mainly Italian wines. It grew, with the acquisition of Wheeler Cellars in 2008 and Great Western Wine in 2010, to one of the UK’s biggest specialist importers and distributors.

Nardone sold the business in 2008 for £8.2m to Isis Equity Partners, a UK-based investment group.

Headquartered in West London, it now employs 181 staff and in 2011 generated over £100m in sales. According to financial sources, between 2005 and 2011 turnover grew from £47m to £106m.

Tristan Nagler of Investec said they were delighted to support the Enotria management team and BlueGem Capital Partners.

‘We strongly support their ambitious plans for growth and acquisition…we are strong supporters of entrepreneurs and believe that, in the short term, an increasing number of mid-market companies will require innovative funding structures.’

Written by Adam Lechmere

Adam Lechmere
Adam Lechmere
Decanter Magazine, Wine Editor & Writer

Adam Lechmere is consultant editor of Club Oenologique among other things.

Formerly launch editor of Decanter.com, which he edited until 2011, he has been writing about wine for 20 years, contributing to Decanter, World of Fine Wine, Meininger’s, the Guardian and many others. Before joining the wine world he worked for the BBC, and as a music and film gossip journalist.