The business...

EarthStream Global is an international staffing business with offices in UK, Germany, Spain, Singapore, South Africa and USA. It focuses on finding permanent staff and contractor resource for clients operating in the natural resources, clean energy and power transmission markets.

The deal...

The commodities boom and emergence of clean energy were driving strong demand for talent in these sectors. This, coupled with an ageing workforce, fuelled a strong demand for staffing services in the sector. EarthStream was an opportunity to back a team already well known to KCP to build a market leading business servicing this market.

KCP invested £2 million in March 2013. The funds were used to fund the accelerated growth of the business including new offices.

KCP value-add...

During our investment we:

• Supplemented the senior management team, including recruitment of a CFO
• Enabled the business to invest in staff, new offices and the IT platform to support the rapid growth trajectory
• Supported the team through the challenges of significant and sudden falling demand in core markets and refocussing on more stable sectors and new high growth markets such as wind energy

Exit...

KCP fully exited EarthStream when the group merged with two other staffing business in early 2020 to form TechStream Group. This new international staffing group was funded by equity investment from Universal Partners and bank facilities from Investec plc. The transaction resulted in a positive investment return for KCP funds.

Key highlights...

• KCP supported the business and management in challenging markets
• Refocusing the business on more stable and emerging markets resulted in the business being successfully exited