Hello Rainmakers,
So much of Rainmakers’ reporting is about the pipeline, the negotiations and the announcement of acquisitions.
But what about the potentially-just-as-consequential integration of that newly-bought business?
To build an idea of what merger best practice might look like in 2026, we spoke to a few deal-making bosses, along with investors, advisors and trade bodies.
Rainmakers subscribers get two unique pieces a week, but also full access to our back catalogue of investigations, scoops, and interviews with entrepreneurs like this one, also insights from The Secret Investor, and the leaders from other VC and PE investors like Endless, BGF and WestBridge.
The Macfarlane Group has completed 20 acquisitions in the last 10 years, keeping a pretty steady pace of two a year.
In January 2025, the Glasgow-based packaging firm acquired the Pitreavie Group for £18m, including an earn-out of up to £4m over two years. This followed an £11.5m deal for Bedfordshire-based foam specialist Polyformes in July 2024 and the £3.25m purchase of East Anglian company Allpack Packaging Supplies in March that year. There were also two additions in 2023: protective packaging firm B&D 2010 Group for £3.85m in October and A&G Holdings - owner of Gottlieb Packaging Materials - for £3.55m in May.
Chief executive Peter Atkinson said, perhaps predictably, that the starting point is to only buy quality firms.
“This means we don’t arrive at integration with any things we need to do in a panic,” he stated. “Quality for us is not just the financial performance, but the way it’s run and the style of management - which must fit with our customer orientation.
“I’d say about half the businesses we buy are because the owner wants to retire without succession in place - but often these leaders have stayed on longer than they thought they would, as they’ve generated some money and realised they still have a passion for the business.”
Macfarlane always uses an earn-out structure, whereby an agreed acquisition price comes with further money due depending on achieving particular agreed targets. “So the initial stages are all about supporting them to achieve these - we find it creates a momentum and is mutually beneficial,” Atkinson noted.
As for the rough hierarchy of needs during the merger process, he said the first thing to do is settling down all the new people to ensure they will stay, before moving to things like the property estate.
“There are often opportunities to integrate their offices into a current Macfarlane property - I’d say about 20% have been able to co-locate, or visa versa - then we look at things like purchasing synergies - typically we buy smaller businesses, so we work with their supply bases to see what benefits we can bring through scale - and then usually its relatively small job with things like IT, accounting and back office processes, but we always try to merge those into our systems,” explained Atkinson.
“Anything we do on integration has to be consistent with the earn out programme - and part of what we’re buying is their brand, so we tend not to interfere with branding; maybe introducing co-branding at a later date,” he concluded. “They’ve all been within our space, so it’s just about building scale, expanding geographic coverage and becoming the market leader in spaces we understand.”
A business at an earlier stage in its acquisitive growth journey is Dundee-headquartered chartered surveyors and property consultants Graham + Sibbald.
