Virgin Wines Management Buys Business For £14 Million

Virgin Wines UK business has been sold to its management by owner Direct Wines in a deal estimated to be worth around £14 million.

Direct Wines will still own the Virgin Wines businesses in the US and Australia and plans to continue to push on overseas expansion while focusing on its Laithwaite's Wine business in the UK.

Direct Wines is still owned by the Laithwaite family which founded the £350 million turnover business in 1969.

Virgin Wines management team, led by managing director Jay Wright, said it will now accelerate the growth of Virgin Wines in the UK backed by private equity firms Mobeus Equity Partners and Connection Capital. Finance director Graeme Weir and marketing director Paul Adams also formed part of the team.

UK sales at Virgin Wines were £35 million in the year to June 2013 but Wright told the Guardian he planned to increase that to £50 million over the next four to five years. Wright founded Warehouse Wines in 2000, sold it to Direct Wines.

'It's a fabulous opportunity to do everything the way we want to do it. Strategically we are looking at much faster growth," Wright told the Guardian newspaper.

Simon McMurtrie, group chief executive of Direct Wines, said in a statement: 'The Board of the Direct Wines group and our shareholders, the Laithwaite family, want us to accelerate our growth in the US, Australia and in our core Laithwaite’s Wine business in the UK and that is where we are now focusing our investment.'