Archive for the ‘News’ Category
Friday, April 16th, 2010
The Oxford Research Agency (TORA) has revealed plans to expand beyond its UK home with new offices in North America and mainland Europe in the summer; and has shuffled its senior management to ready itself for the move.
Chris Sinclair and Andrew Tharme, who led the management buy-out of the company in April 2008, become CEO of the expanded group and MD of the UK business respectively.
Most of the firm’s customer experience and FMCG research work is conducted via interactive online studies. Sinclair says the expansion is underpinned by the firm’s “innovative approach to testing products, packs and concepts, with full integration with our validated food and drink volumetric model”. He adds: “We are seeing considerable demand for our unique products across the globe and are looking forward to providing clients with a fresh and exciting approach to developing and launching better global food and drink products.”
The agency, which is actively recruiting for staff for its new offices, is online at www.tora.co.uk .
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Monday, March 29th, 2010
Crendo is pleased to announce that it has been awarded two new contracts with HFAB, one of Sweden’s largest municipal housing companies. HFAB has been operating for over 60 years and owns over 9,800 apartments, 300 rooms and a variety of garages and car parks. They are the largest player in Halmstad’s real estate market.
Crendo’s contracts are for a wide spectrum of electrical and construction services. The contracts which were signed today in Halmstad will start in May 2010.
The contracts are “umbrella contracts” and represent a significant uplift to Crendo’s sales.
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Friday, March 12th, 2010
Fruit smoothie firm Innocent’s former head of customer insights Jan Worsley has joined FMCG research specialist The Oxford Research Agency (TORA) as an associate director.
Worsley has spent the past four-and-a-half years at Innocent, leading a team of four with responsibility for all consumer data, research and direct consumer interaction. Prior to this he spent four years at TNS as a bespoke solutions consultant.
At TORA, Worsley will work with food and drink clients, providing consultancy on all aspects of the new product development process.
Worsley said: “Clients are increasingly short of time and need to work with agencies that they can trust. The economic climate of the last 18 months has challenged everyone, and this year the best agencies will be those that deliver unexpected insight to help their clients to predict consumer behaviour as we emerge slowly from recession.”
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Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
Next Wave Partners acquires environmentally friendly packaging company
Next Wave Partners is delighted to announce the acquisition of Petainer, the market leader in Germany for reusable PET bottles and in the Nordic region for PET beverage containers, from Rexam Plc for a consideration of £16 million. This acquisition will allow Petainer to expand into other growth markets, including other beverage sectors that are beginning to replace their current packaging with PET and geographically into Central and Eastern Europe.
Headquartered in Lidköping Sweden, with a second plant in Aš, Czech Republic and a sales office in Germany, Petainer was formerly part of Rexam Plc, a global consumer packaging company. Petainer manufactures and supplies polyethylene terephalate (“PET”) bottles, preforms[1] and kegs to a range of global drinks companies.
Petainer is now wholly owned by Next Wave Partners, a growth capital investor, WHEB Ventures and a combination of the current management team led by Per-Olof Wallin, Managing Director, and two new directors, Nigel Pritchard, Group CEO, and Brian Woods, Group COO.
Stephen Walls, Partner at Next Wave Partners said: “We are delighted to announce the acquisition of Petainer. The business is cash generative, has existing long term relationships with blue chip customers and comes to us with a very strong and experienced management team.”
James McNaught-Davis, Managing Partner at WHEB Ventures said: “Petainer’s unique products reduce the environmental impact normally associated with drinks packaging. Businesses faced with the increasing challenge of meeting their carbon reduction commitments have found Petainer’s products provide the solution for meeting packaging volume reduction plans.”
Per-Olof Wallin, Managing Director of Petainer, Sweden said: “Petainer’s latest technology, the PET beer keg was launched in September 2009 and aims to replace the traditional metal keg. The PET keg significantly reduces the environmental impact of keg distribution. It is substantially lighter compared to its metal counterpart, requires less energy in its manufacture and is recyclable, therefore removing the need for it to be returned. It also provides significant savings to breweries in the total cost of draught beer distribution and removes the working capital burden of running a large fleet of metal kegs. Trial customers include both high-end specialist breweries and large beer multinationals.”
Nigel Pritchard, Petainer’s new Group CEO said: “This acquisition is a very exciting opportunity to build on the Company’s reputation for operational and service excellence. Our future growth strategy is based on investing in innovation and new product and service development and in providing the continuous development and excellence that our customers have come to expect.”
The global market for consumer packaging is estimated at $450 billion. Of this, 70% is for food and beverage applications and 40% of this comprises plastic packaging.
Market estimates predict that the global demand for PET packaging will grow by 40% by 2015 from 2009 figures.
Advisers:
Legal adviser: Macfarlanes, Howard Corney
Corporate finance adviser: Blackwood Capital Group, Thomas Kardos
Due diligence adviser: PricewaterhouseCoopers, Andrew McCrosson
[1] Preforms are injection moulded PET “test-tubes” which can be blown into bottles on customers sites in integrated blowing and filling lines.
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Friday, October 2nd, 2009
The Oxford Research Agency (TORA) has made a number of appointments and promotions as part of its strategy for continued growth.
Richard Mills joins as Research Director, having previously been on the Board at MMR Research Worldwide. Before that, he worked at Mars, Rothmans, and Allied Domecq.
Sarah Heather takes up the post of Associate Director after eight years working in FMCG adhoc NPD research at Conquest.
At Mimosa, the firm’s new qualitative division – Sunita Bhabra joins from Kids Research, with more than 12 years’ experience in FMCG, NPD, media and social research.
In addition, Teresa Pereira joins as Research Executive from Marktest, Portugal; Bethany Shinkins joins as Trainee Statistician with an MSc in Applied Statistics and Data Mining and a BSc in Psychology; and Jigna Naik joins as Senior DP Executive having previously held several DP and operations roles in the UK and India.
Joint MD Andrew Tharme comments: ‘We are delighted that we are in a position to continue to recruit talent into our business. Richard and Sarah bring with them a combined total of over 30 years FMCG NPD experience, whereas, Sunita brings with her rare expertise in kids’ qualitative research.’
With regard to existing staff, Stuart Wright has been promoted to the role of Research Manager in the Customer Experience team, while Irene Koumi moves up to the post of Research Executive in the FMCG team.
Tharme added that both promotions reflect the pair’s ‘tremendous performance’ and are thoroughly deserved.
TORA conducts ad hoc and tracking work covering FMCG, transport, education, local government and retail research.
Web sites: www.tora.co.uk and www.mimosa-qual.com
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Monday, April 6th, 2009
Next Wave portfolio company, The Oxford Research Agency (TORA), makes strategic acquisition
The Oxford Research Group has acquired the rights to a unique market research tool which will strengthen the agency’s delivery of insights into the potential for its client’s new product launches.
The acquisition represents a significant opportunity for growth for the agency as it will enable the company to respond more quickly to its clients needs.
The acquisition will make The Oxford Research Group one of only 4 UK market research companies with in-house capabilities in volume estimation.
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Saturday, January 31st, 2009
Next Wave portfolio company, The Oxford Research Agency (TORA), launches Mimosa, a new qualitative market research division
The Oxford Research Group has launched a new qualitative market research division to complement its extensive offering in quantitative research.
This represents a significant opportunity for The Oxford Research Group to build its offering and widen the range of services it offers to its existing clients.
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Monday, September 1st, 2008
Next Wave Partners expand investment team
Next Wave Partners LLP which manages the Next Wave Funds has recruited two investment professionals, Peter Wood and Nainish Bapna.
Peter joins Next Wave from PricewaterhouseCoopers Strategy Group where was consulting to mid-market PE firms such as Apax Partners, Doughty Hanson and Bridgepoint on their investment strategy and providing commercial advice on transactions. Peter’s experience spans more than 25 commercial due diligence and corporate strategy projects. At Next Wave, Peter will be responsible for investment appraisal and in-house commercial due diligence.
Nainish joins Next Wave from the Fund’s portfolio company ITI Energy which he joined in turn from Strand Partners, the corporate finance boutique, in April 2007. Nainish brings entrepreneurial and analytical expertise to the Next Wave team, drawing upon 5 years equity research at UBS Warburg and Nomura, followed by one year as Director of Operations at NCorp and then four years as Founder and Managing Director of the Pharmacy Channel which became the world’s largest in-pharmacy digital media network. Nainish will focus on portfolio management.
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Sunday, June 1st, 2008
Next Wave Partners portfolio company, Crendo announces its first acquisition
Crendo has acquired a local competitor, Vellinge, giving it a new presence in the Gothenburg area. The acquisition will give Crendo a base to further expand its service offering in the town and surrounding district. Terms were not disclosed.
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Tuesday, April 1st, 2008
Next Wave funds a management buy out of The Oxford Research Agency
Next Wave have backed the MBO of a leading independent market research group, The Oxford Research Agency. The MBO was led by Chris Sinclair and Andrew Tharme who are both experienced market researchers with a proven business development track record.
The Oxford Research Agency has a successful 25 year track record of delivering high quality market research insights to high profile global market leading FMCG clients, retailers and UK rail companies. The company is benefiting from the growing trend towards using on-line market research presence.
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