OakNorth, the digital bank for entrepreneurs, has partnered with HSBC and Santander on a club lending facility to Star Capital to support its buy-out of Subsea Technology & Rentals (STR).
The capital will reportedly enable STR to evolve its equipment and service offering via “organic and acquisition-led growth.”
It will expand the firm’s presence to clients across growing offshore energy and infrastructure markets, with “a new base in Norway set to open early next year.”
Founded in 1994, STR is a provider of specialist equipment, innovative technologies, and data enabling services to the “offshore renewables, oil and gas, and marine science sectors.”
Its equipment and services facilitate exploration, inspection, monitoring, and intervention beneath the ocean’s surface, “helping these industries operate safely and more effectively in challenging marine environments.”
It has offices in Aberdeen in Scotland, Houston, Texas in the US, Singapore, and Perth in Australia, as well as a “dedicated centre of technology and innovation in Great Yarmouth, England.”
It operates on a global scale, enabling clients to acquire critical geo data and intelligence via its “specialist subsea survey equipment and services.”
It has curated and designed a fleet of equipment – a large portion of which is proprietary – to meet the “needs of its customers, with products available to both rent and purchase globally.”
STAR is a European private equity firm, focused on investing in and developing businesses that benefit from “a strategic market position and provide essential services to their customer base.”
Since inception, STAR has built over 28 businesses with a total enterprise value in “excess of €10bn through more than 100 acquisitions.”
STAR has a track record in value generation and driving growth, typically investing in companies with “enterprise values of between €50m and €1bn.”
Steve Steele, Chief Executive Officer of STR, commented:
“Our mission is to offer all our customers a competitive edge by delivering integrated, forward-thinking technology and innovative engineering solutions, complete with flexible and dedicated support from project planning to completion. Working alongside our customers, we establish a close relationship and operate as a strategic partner – which is what we felt we got from OakNorth, HSBC and Santander with this transaction. They worked tirelessly together to get this deal over the line for us, enabling us to pursue exciting growth plans in the months and years ahead with the support of STAR Capital.”
Mark Challis, Director of Debt Finance at OakNorth, added:
“Over the last three decades, the management team at STR has positioned the business as a fully integrated partner to its major customers, and it is now one of less than a handful of rental companies that can service customers globally. It has a sophisticated range of software, sensor technology and equipment, spanning thousands of assets, including a significant and growing number of proprietary in-house innovations. It is incredibly well-positioned for strong growth in the future, and with the backing of STAR Capital and this funding, it has the financial firepower to take advantage of additional growth opportunities.”
Baird Capital, an investor of STR since January 2022, has now “exited the business following STAR Capital’s investment.”
