A Scottish billionaire is breathing new life into a Fife engineering firm which once employed thousands of workers.
Rosyth-based Parsons Peebles Generation has been snapped up by Clyde Blowers Capital, the industrial investment vehicle founded by businessman Jim McColl, in a transaction understood to have involved a significant eight-figure sum.
The company, which can trace its roots back more than a century, designs and manufactures motors and power generation machinery from its dockside base.
The new management have vowed to invest heavily and create dozens of jobs.
At its height the firm employed more than 3,000 workers, but those numbers dwindled down the decades and it was placed into receivership in 2005.
The firm was saved by Paterson’s Quarries and now trades profitably it made £1.3 million before tax in 2011 and employs more than 40 staff.
Mr McColl, who is estimated to have a billion-pound fortune, told The Courier he had been aware of the firm for several years and was delighted to have acquired it following protracted negotiations with Paterson’s chairman Willie Paterson.
“I started to look at businesses last year and I thought it had great potential to grow globally and I started focusing on it then,” Mr McColl said.
“I had to work hard on Willie Paterson to convince him to sell it to us, as it is a profitable small business just now and he was happy with it.
“Willie bought it out of receivership and did a good job to stabilise it and make it profitable.”
He said he now planned to restore Parsons to its former glory through a major programme of investment that would see the firm become the central hub of a wider company wheel.
He expected the workforce at Rosyth would double as the company built itself up again through a mixture of organic growth and acquisitions.
“We will invest a significant amount of money to grow the business in Rosyth,” said Mr McColl.
“We will probably expand the facility there and we will look to make strategic acquisitions in others parts of the world,” he said.
“They do quite a bit in the North Sea and we will be looking at a service centre in Aberdeen and we will be looking to increase our service capacity in the Middle East.”
Mr McColl said the enlarged business would retain its name as it grew, and would remain headquartered in Rosyth.
It will also be looking to exploit opportunities in the maturing wind turbine industry on the east coast.
Clyde Blowers already has an interest in the sector in Fife through a multi-million- pound tie-up between its David Brown Gear Systems subsidiary and Korean giant Samsung Heavy Industries, which is advancing plans to test a 7MW capacity turbine at Methil.
Mr McColl said: “Parsons is very big in generators, and once these are up offshore Parsons has the capability to make generators for them. There is also a fabulous opportunity in servicing these turbines.”
Willie Paterson said Clyde Blowers had the capacity to build Parsons back into a true engineering giant.
He said: “We are delighted to announce the sale of Parsons Peebles Generation to Clyde Blowers Capital, who can truly take the business back onto the global stage.
“We are similarly pleased that our subsidiary, Gartsherrie Engineering, will remain as a key supplier to Parsons Peebles Generation going forward.
“The deal will result in a substantial cash injection into the Patersons Group which will significantly bolster our group balance sheet.”
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