Ardmac, the international construction specialist headquartered in Dublin, has announced that it has taken a significant equity investment in Cental, a provider of advanced modular infrastructure to the data centre, utilities and telecoms industries.
Established more than five years ago, Cental has enjoyed impressive growth to date with annualised revenues of €20 million.
With this latest strategic investment by Ardmac, the Carlow-based business is set for further growth and is projecting to double its workforce to 140 people over the next 24 months, it said.
Offsite modular solutions
The combined expertise and resources resulting from this development will enhance Ardmac’s capabilities as a provider of offsite modular solutions to its clients in the data centre, pharmaceutical, healthcare and advanced manufacturing sectors, while opening up new solutions for commercial fit-out clients.
Ronan Quinn, CEO for the company, said: “This investment in Cental provides Ardmac with a reputable specialist partner, additional manufacturing capacity and a further foothold in the market for offsite modular construction.
"In Cental, we now have that crucial manufacturing fabrication infrastructure that provides the expertise and capacity required to deliver complex high value projects offsite and then deliver them to our customer locations. We are very excited to leverage the synergies in place between our two companies.”
Doubling 70-strong engineering team
Brian McGuire CEO of Cental, said: “We are delighted to welcome Ardmac as strategic partners. Our combined engineering and management teams will further enhance our already ambitious growth strategy.
"We look forward to doubling our 70-strong engineering team to deliver this growth into new and existing vertical and geographical markets.”
New Cental Board of directors from left to right: Brian McGuire, CEO; Ian Madden, director; Ronan Quinn, director; and John Moore, chairman
Cental’s manufacturing capability will support Ardmac’s recently announced agreement with US-based Germfree Laboratories to provide prefabricated turnkey modular cleanrooms and biosafety laboratories to the biopharma and healthcare sectors throughout Europe.
It also provides a manufacturing base for all other Ardmac modular solutions under one roof.
“The construction ecosystem of the future will be a more standardised, consolidated and integrated construction process where modular assemblies and entire modular buildings will be much more common," said Quinn.
"Our recent transactions with Germfree and Cental position us to be a significant provider of such prefabricated solutions for life science and advanced manufacturing applications.”