ESKEN RENEWABLES acquired by PIONEER POINT PARTNERS

Pioneer Point Partners agreed to acquire Esken Renewables, the UK supplier of waste-derived biomass fuel, from the London-listed Esken Limited at an enterprise value of £107.7m, and completed the deal on 1 December 2023. The purchase was made through the firm’s Pioneer Infrastructure Partners fund, which closed at 575 million euros in February 2022 above its initial 500 million target, and was its seventh investment. At the time of the sale, Esken Renewables generated revenue of £50–100M, employed more than 300 people and held long-term contracts to supply around 1.7 million tonnes of fuel a year to dedicated biomass power plants across the United Kingdom, enough renewable electricity to cover the annual domestic needs of 2% of the British population. The sale completed almost twelve months after the process began. Esken’s board had launched a strategic review of its two operating businesses, Esken Renewables and London Southend Airport, in November 2022, and the disposal gave the group the means to repay its debt facility and to turn to the maturity of its exchangeable bond and the sale of the airport. Esken Renewables had itself been renamed from Stobart Energy only eighteen months earlier. Pioneer planned to keep scaling the business, which fitted its objectives around the green transition and the circular economy, and which runs a national network of processing and storage sites and its own fleet of specialist waste vehicles. Chief executive Richard Jenkins stayed at the head of the company, which was renamed Seras under its new owner. Canaccord Genuity acted as exclusive financial adviser and sole sponsor to Esken on what was classified as a Class 1 disposal, with Eversheds Sutherland as legal counsel.