IMES Group Ltd, the Aberdeen-based specialist engineering and programme management group, has acquired Buchan Inspection Service (BIS), it was announced on 5 December 2000.
The deal, worth in excess of £500,000 ($700,000) for BIS in a mixture of cash now and profit sharing in the future, maintains the involvement of BIS founder Graham Douglas as managing director of the business.
The acquisition takes IMES Group’s annualised turnover to more than £7m ($10m). Employee numbers have more than doubled in the last three years and now stand at 100.
BIS will remain an independent company but will now have access to increased resources to allow it to develop and grow, IMES said.
BIS is one of only 11 companies in the UK to have EN 45004 Type A accreditation to the European Standard for In Service Inspection.
IMES chairman/chief executive Melfort Campbell said: “Buchan Inspection Services complements the Group’s work. It is a beacon of excellence in this field and we are delighted to welcome the 11 strong team to the IMES Group. This acquisition is part of our long term strategy to continue to add excellence to our expanding skills base.” Graham Douglas, who founded Buchan Inspection Services in 1985, said: “IMES has similar but complementary skills. We will be able to develop our business independently… not only by gaining a stronger foothold in the southern North Sea through IMES’ presence in Great Yarmouth, but also into the increasingly diverse and global markets which IMES has already broken into such as defence.” IMES Group, founded in 1985 by Melfort Campbell, describes itself as a broad-based health and safety engineering company providing specialist services and equipment for customers in the oil industry, power generation, shipping and general industries. It says it is a market leader in load, strain and stress monitoring, measurement and data gathering. Companies in the group include Water Weights, which uses water-filled bags to conduct load tests.
