Beech Tree Private Equity acquires Redstor Holdings

Beech Tree Private Equity, which has offices in Manchester and Birmingham, has acquired a fast-growing provider of cloud data management software and services – Redstor Holdings.

Redstor will use the backing investment to accelerate product development and support complementary acquisitions.

The private equity firm had been looking to invest in a company with exposure to the rapid growth in data generated by businesses and selected Reading-based Redstor, which also has operations in South Africa, thanks to the company having expanded its offering to incorporate cloud archiving and disaster recovery.

Redstor also has plans to release data insight functionality soon to address compliance challenges such as the GDPR.

“We have built a strong relationship with the team whilst building a joint plan for the business over the past months,” said Redstor chief executive Paul Evans. “The injection of capital and expertise will really enable us to take Redstor to the next level – we have industry leading software and a managed services wrap that truly distinguishes our offering in the market.

“With Beech Tree’s assistance we will now accelerate our product capability and grow through acquisition. I’ve described Redstor as a hidden gem, it’s the right time now to build the brand and capitalise on the significant investment made in the development of our cloud-enabled software and services.”

Paul Franks, managing partner of Beech Tree Private Equity, added: “There are a number of drivers for rapid growth in the data management and backup market right now, notably the proliferation of data across different devices and end points, the regulatory changes driving control of corporate data and the increased awareness of the threats posed by cyber attacks which is now a board room issue.

“Redstor is a leading business in this sector providing data management and backup to SMEs and enterprise customers, our investment will be used to accelerate some of the exciting products in the pipeline, such as instant restoration of data and GDPR search and management and to provide firepower to undertake acquisitions to scale-up the Redstor business.”

The second funding round was closed in June at £80m and Redstor becomes Beech Tree’s fifth portfolio company acquisition, alongside telematics business RS Connect, loan broker Fluent Money, telecoms operator Wavenet and Learnlight, an education company.