Limerston Capital acquires Rochdale stability storage business in deal with parent company Source BioScience

Photo: Google, DigitalGlobe

Source BioScience premises on Kingsway Business Park

Stability Storage, a Rochdale-based company has been bought in a carve-out deal with its parent company, Source BioScience, by Limerston Capital, the UK mid-market private equity investment firm.

The deal, which is for an undisclosed sum, will see the newly-created standalone company rebranded as Astoriom and will allow the company to focus on biorepository as its core growth area, expanding its footprint within high-value pharmaceutical and biologic markets.

Astoriom offers storage, manufacturing and service and validation for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, contract manufacturers and analytical testing companies across the globe.

With a headcount of 33, it has a strong presence across the UK, Ireland and the USA.

Its core service line is outsourced temperature and humidity-controlled environment storage services for stability trials. This allows products such as drugs, medical devices, consumer products and packaging to be placed in controlled chambers to determine how the quality of the product changes with time under the influence of temperature, humidity and light to the market.

Philip Bradley, who has eight years' experience with the business, will remain as general manager, with a focus on day-to-day operations.

Phil Bradley, general manager of Astoriom said: “Limerston Capital will be an excellent partner for our business, allowing us much greater commercial focus as we operate independently. We look forward to working with their team of hands-on operating partners to help guide us in realising the enormous growth potential now available to us.” 

Jane Grewar, senior operating partner, Limerston Capital, said: “We believe Astoriom has an enormous amount of untapped potential that, with the right support, can be unlocked. Geographically, its sites are well spread, it has a broad customer base and an excellent reputation.

“We are looking forward to working with Phil and his highly capable team to leverage the success of the business to date, growing its presence in target sectors especially bio-storage and the pharmaceutical market.”