NorthEdge makes two investments in a week

NorthEdge Capital has made an investment in Help-Link, a boiler and central heating installation specialist in Leeds, according to a statement.     

The stake and deal value were undisclosed. 

The investment will be used to further accelerate the company’s growth and to expand its brand into other areas. Although headquartered in Leeds, Help-Link has a national platform. It employs more than 200 people and has turnover of more than £30 million. 

The investment is the third transaction from the NorthEdge Capital Fund I, which closed on its £225million hard-cap last week. Since then, it has invested in IT solutions provider Jigsaw24. In February, NorthEdge invested in FPE Global, a special engineering firm. The firm held a £125 million first close last summer. 

NorthEdge, which has offices in Manchester and Leeds, was established in 2009 by co-founders Andy Ball, Grant Berry and Dan Wright and Emma Rawlinson. The generalist firm targets investments between £5 million and £35 million in businesses with an enterprise value of between £10 million and £100 million.

For its first fund, NorthEdge attracted commitments from global institutional investors, including CNP Assurances, Industriens Pension, MLC Investments, Pathway Capital Partners, West Yorkshire Pension Fund and the European Investment Fund (EIF). 

According to Edward Claessen, an EIF principal, investing with NorthEdge was “a very promising opportunity”, he told PEI in a recent interview.  “A lot of managers we historically backed were London centric, with offices in the region. We do first time teams and first time funds, but we obviously like to see the experience in the team and NorthEdge is a good example of that. People often think the UK is revolving around London but actually the north of England is a large homeland for many SMEs and companies,” he said.