As we’d hoped, the deal which allows the newly incorporated company Arran Isle Ltd to purchase all of the subsidiaries of Heywood Williams plc including Mila Hardware has been completed this week.

It’s been widely reported and I’ve written before on this blog that the deal is backed by a UK banking syndicate which now owns 80% of the shares, with an Employee Benefit Trust and the Group’s Executive Directors each holding another 10% each. 

For Mila’s customers and suppliers, nothing really has changed since we first announced the restructuring of Heywood Williams at the beginning of October but for those of us in the business, it’s a massive boost to finally have the financial backing and security which Arran Isle can offer.

£6m of new investment is available to support the growth of the European subsidiaries as the recovery gets underway, and for Mila in particular this means we can push ahead with our product development launches for 2010 and make the necessary investments in new stock.

We’ll be previewing some of these new products online before Christmas and we’ve got more than 10 product launches planned for the first half of next year.  Keep checking our product previews section of the website for details and we’ll of course be keeping all of our customers fully up to date.

Richard