{"id":52960,"date":"2025-04-17T12:38:35","date_gmt":"2025-04-17T12:38:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/belfast-firm-takes-majority-stake-in-gb-manufacturer\/"},"modified":"2025-04-17T12:38:37","modified_gmt":"2025-04-17T12:38:37","slug":"belfast-firm-takes-majority-stake-in-gb-manufacturer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/belfast-firm-takes-majority-stake-in-gb-manufacturer\/","title":{"rendered":"Belfast firm takes majority stake in GB manufacturer"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Belfast-based firm W&R Barnett has bought a majority stake in Symphony Group, the UK’s largest privately owned manufacturer of fitted furniture.<\/p>\n

W&R Barnett was already among the UK’s biggest family-owned firms with an annual turnover of almost \u00a32bn.<\/p>\n

Its core business is trading in agricultural commodities like grains, sugars and animal feed.<\/p>\n

A decade ago the company diversified by buying a stake in Logson, a packaging manufacturer, later buying full control of that business.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Symphony Group, which is based in south Yorkshire, makes fitted kitchens and bathrooms, as well as fitted bedroom furniture.<\/p>\n

It employs around 2,000 people and in 2023 made a pre-tax profit of \u00a315m on turnover of \u00a3340m<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chief executive William Barnett said: ”We are very excited to invest in the Symphony Group and look forward to working with the management team to continue its success and growth.”<\/p>\n

The current beneficial owners of the Symphony Group, Doug Gregory and his family, will retain a significant share in the business and be represented at board level.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile one of Northern Ireland’s largest construction companies, Gilbert-Ash, is effectively being taken over by its employees.<\/p>\n

The business is being restructured as an employee ownership trust (EOT).<\/p>\n

EOTs are a UK government initiative aimed at promoting employee ownership by giving business owners the opportunity to sell their shares to an employee owned trust free from capital gains tax.<\/p>\n

Gilbert-Ash managing director Ray Hutchinson said: “We are confident that the transition to an EOT is firmly in the best interests of our people, the future success of our business and retains our roots as an employee-owned company.<\/p>\n

“As an employee-owned company we have seen the benefits of improved loyalty, productivity and innovation from our people, and we believe moving to an EOT will enhance these values even more.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Belfast-based firm W&R Barnett has bought a majority stake in Symphony Group, the UK’s largest privately owned manufacturer of fitted furniture. W&R Barnett was already among the UK’s biggest family-owned firms with an annual turnover of almost \u00a32bn. Its core business is trading in agricultural commodities like grains, sugars and animal feed. A decade ago […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[48],"tags":[420,146,6981,16905,8235,542],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52960"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52960"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52962,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52960\/revisions\/52962"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}