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important it was to make that kind of transition smooth and quick, and when it all started moving, the work that went into it was phenomenal.”


While it was important from a business perspective to get things set up quickly, Tim added that JBL felt the need to do things quickly in order to assure Premiere of how seriously they took the acquisition. He said: “Premiere has got fantastic brands, great customer relationships and a really good team who understand the market and are super committed. In order for those three things to be maintained, and to become better, we had to act quickly to ensure continuity.


“On top of that, we wanted to do it quickly so that Quil and her colleagues could see that we were doing this properly and that we were part of a business that gave them a positive future.”


This dedication to get Premiere firmly set up as part of the ‘JBL family’ is something that could be seen right across the board. From the labs and design offices, to the warehouse and production facilities, there is a real buzz around the place, and a determination for the acquisition to be a success. On top of this, it is clear that integration was very much a high priority for JBL during the acquisition process.


“The integration was always a really important part,” Tim explained. “Some businesses will buy out a company and almost wipe out their identity, or they will keep them very much unchanged as a separate business. But for us, the sum of the parts was greater, in terms of coming together. It would have made zero sense to have bought Premiere and almost throw the baby out of the bathwater, as it were.


“The knowledge within the Premiere business was only going to add to what we were doing, and hopefully vice versa as well. So with the two businesses working together now, we’ve got consolidated manufacturing, consolidated technical competence, but we want at the same time to maintain and develop further that strong Premiere brand identity with people who are there, and we’re trying to get the balance between the two.”


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This integration will mean that, rather than using the skills of JBL’s scientists to develop new products in areas that they had never really ventured before, such as the aerosol markets, Premiere will look to complement their offering with JBL’s existing brands to offer more complete packages and to open doors that may have previously been unavailable to them.


“It’s that complementary aspect that we’re working towards, working together with each brand,” Tim continued. “That’s not about not wanting to invest in and develop Premiere, but it’s actually the opposite, where it’s about focusing on where the real strength and understanding is with Premiere, and how this fits alongside the strength and competence of our Nilco brand or our Hycote brand and so on. That’s the benefit of being a wider group.”


“From the labs and design offices, to the warehouse and production facilities, there is a real buzz


around the place, and a determination for the


acquisition to be a success.”


Quil added: “That’s the beauty of this – we could never specialise in aerosols because what we’re good at is chemical manufacture, but we can look at what offering there is under another brand, because we’re all under one umbrella. There would be no point in Premiere adding to its brand with a product that is already there under another name, otherwise you could end up ‘Premiere-ising’ everything, and that’s not what this is about.”


So by all accounts, things are going well for Premiere and JBL post- acquisition, but were there ever any doubts from James Briggs before the acquisition? After all, a move of this magnitude can be seen as a big risk.


“No, there wasn’t really much of a gamble there,” Tim assured me. “Inevitably, by definition when you buy another business there is always an element of risk, but actually, we knew what we were buying, and we could see that there was a fit.


“The products that Premiere produce, there’s a complementary fit with our existing range, so it fitted in with where we were looking to grow the business in the hygiene and cleaning markets. So from that sense, Premiere came along and it was a case of ‘this makes absolute sense, we’ve just got to go for it’, so it fitted strategically with where the business was going.”


Tomorrow’s Cleaning July 2016 | 33


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