Mountain Warehouse Scottish insect spray supplier bought out
Scotmas Group, which was started by Stefan Cameron's grandfather, was previously the majority shareholder.
He is targeting growth in online sales and further expansion in overseas markets.
Kelso-based Pyramid Travel Products specialises in manufacturing health-related travel products aimed at protecting 'outdoor enthusiasts from adventurers to gardeners', with a particular emphasis on safety in malaria-prone and tropical regions.
Read more
HSBC noted that Pyramid is aiming to expand its online sales presence through its website and other marketplaces, 'shifting focus towards individual customers' while maintaining its business relationships with companies such as Mountain Warehouse and Ocado.
Pyramid, which already has a presence in Germany, Chile, Singapore and Norway, plans to expand its product range and enter new territories in Europe, the Middle East, and South America.
The company, which recorded turnover of around £1 million in 2024, employs seven full-time staff, including in technical, operations, and production roles.
It is hiring two additional seasonal staff during the summer to meet increased demand.
Stefan Cameron, managing director of Pyramid, said: 'The ownership transition will enable us to be better prepared and positioned for future growth as market demands and our service offering evolves. Thanks to the support from HSBC UK, I have been able to smoothly transition into becoming the majority stakeholder.'
Allan McGraw, relationship manager at HSBC UK, said the management buy-out at Pyramid would 'pave the way for continued growth in the years to come'.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Scotsman
an hour ago
- Scotsman
Collapsed luxury Glastonbury Festival glamping firm debts revealed
From fresh revelations over Glastonbury glamping firm Yurtel's collapse and EDF's takeover of Pod Point, to Octopus investing in African clean tech, Badenoch's business plea, rising jobseeker numbers, and FuelHub's funding push - here are today's top UK business stories. Sign up to our Scotsman Money newsletter, covering all you need to know to help manage your money. Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Luxury Glastonbury glamping firm Yurtel racked up over £2 million in customer debts before collapsing in May. A new report shows some festivalgoers paid up to £16,500 for high-end packages. The Wiltshire-based company has told customers to seek refunds through third parties. Liquidators at Begbies Traynor have confirmed £2.2 million in unsecured claims. Luxury Glastonbury glamping firm Yurtel racked up over £2 million in customer debts before collapsing. | Getty Images EDF takes over Pod Point and Kemi Badenoch's rally cry: More Business in Brief EDF is taking full control of EV charging firm Pod Point in a £10.6 million deal. The move comes after weak EV sales and a falling share price left Pod Point struggling. EDF said the takeover was the only way to secure the company's future. Pod Point runs over 250,000 charging points across the UK. Octopus Energy has acquired Sheffield-based MOPO, a clean tech firm working in Sub-Saharan Africa. MOPO rents out solar-charged batteries, offering a greener alternative to petrol generators. The pay-per-use model helps bring affordable power to underserved communities. Octopus says the deal will accelerate access to clean energy across the region. Kemi Badenoch has urged businesses to 'get on the pitch' and oppose harmful policies. Speaking at a business conference, she said the Conservatives are still their best bet. Her comments came as GDP figures showed the economy shrinking more than expected. She also slammed Labour's planned tax rises, including on family farms. The number of people looking for jobs is rising at the fastest rate in over four years. A report from KPMG and REC says redundancies and fewer vacancies are driving the trend. Permanent job placements fell again in May as firms scaled back recruitment. The data comes from a survey of 400 recruitment agencies across the UK.
Daily Mirror
5 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
Extraordinary £7 million upside-down railway that whizzes passengers over rivers
Suspended in the air, dangling up to 29ft in certain parts of the journey, this upside down railway truly is an incredible feat of engineering - and has been running for more than a century This spectacular upside-down railway may look like a fairground ride - but has actually been transporting commuters and tourists for more than 100 years. Suspended in the air, dangling up to 29ft above the ground at certain parts of the journey, the Wuppertal Schwebebahn is an incredible feat of engineering. Construction of the upside-down railway began in the summer of 1898 and the first test drive took place in the winter, but it wasn't until 1901 that a section of the track was opened to the public. Classed as the world's oldest suspended railway, this enchanting train, located in the hip town of Wuppertal in Germany, cost a whopping 16 million German marks, which would have converted to around £7.79 million. Factoring in inflation, this would have cost a staggering £82.5 million today. "My fascination with the Schwebebahn lies in the way it was constructed over 100 years ago," Cologne-based architect Christian Busch told CNN Trave l back in 2022. "To realise such a project without computer-aided systems would be unthinkable today. A ride in the Schwebebahn allows the passenger an extraordinary insight into the life of the local residents and really looks like a fairground attraction from days gone by." Over the past century, the railway has undergone several major refurbs - with sleek new carriages replacing the original ones. However, you can still privately hire the first 1901 carriage, named Kaiserwagan after Kaiser Wilhelm II took a test ride on it. In 1950, the Schwebebahn transported Tuffi the circus elephant above the ground. However, the racket from fellow passengers and journalists was too much for the animal, who ended up trampling a row of seats before jumping through a window into the river below. Luckily, Tuffi wasn't badly injured by the incident - and now the train is reserved exclusively for humans. A small statue of the elephant was however constructed on the river where Tuffi landed, which has become a popular tourist sight for holidaymakers. Now, the Wuppertal Schwebebahn (which is technically classed as a suspension monorail) consists of 20 stops and attracts more than 80,000 people every day. "It is therefore an everyday means of transport for the inhabitants of the city, but also a popular tourist attraction," the train's official website states. "Many sights can easily be reached on foot from the 20 suspension railway stations. Since August 1, 2019, only the new 'Generation 15' railcars have been in service." Guided by huge iron arches, the railway track whizzes over cars, shops, and pedestrians, before offering stunning aerial views of the serpentine river. 24-hour tickets cost €8.80 per person, or €4.40 for any additional passengers. Children under six go free, while elephants are asked to find alternative methods of transport.
The Herald Scotland
5 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
Politics overshadow pain of cuts at Alexander Dennis
This is all the more so when it comes to manufacturing job losses in Scotland, perhaps because of the extent to which this sector has dwindled over the decades. The news that up to 400 jobs are at risk at Falkirk bus manufacturing firm Alexander Dennis is first and foremost a massive blow to the people directly affected. It means there is a very real prospect of hundreds more people joining the ranks of the unemployed in an area hit hard by the closure of Scotland's only oil refinery at Grangemouth, with the loss of around 400 job losses. It is always disheartening when concerns over widespread job cuts come a distant second in the minds of those seeking to score political points from corporate decisions taken to reduce workforces. Yet, coming so soon after further job cuts were announced by oil and gas giant Harbour Energy in Aberdeen, a move blamed by the company on the UK Government's energy profits levy, the proposed cuts at Alexander Dennis have led to an impression of decline in Scottish industry. Opponents of the Scottish Government have been quick to assert that events at Alexander Dennis are yet more evidence of the administration's flawed strategy and failure to protect industry and jobs. These critics repeatedly point to the delays and cost over-runs in the delivery by the nationalised Ferguson Marine shipyard of two ferries to serve the west coast and the time it has taken to find a buyer for Prestwick Airport, which was taken into state ownership in 2013, in justification of these claims (even though Prestwick is now regularly making profits and beginning to build a lucrative air freight operation). The Scottish Government has also come under for fire failing to deliver the amount of "green" jobs in the transition from oil and gas production to renewable energy that ministers forecast. Read more: But in the matter of Alexander Dennis, which has been part of NFI Group since the North American company acquired the firm for £320 million in 2019, any culpability on the part of the Scottish Government seems hard to discern. Winnipeg-based NFI, which is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, looks simply to have assessed its costs and concluded that it can save money by consolidating its UK bus body building operations into a single site. Unfortunately for Scotland, the site selected for this work is in Scarborough, not Falkirk. Euan Stainbank, the Scottish Labour MP for Falkirk, said the Scottish Government should have done more to support Alexander Dennis by ordering more buses from domestic manufacturers to serve local networks. He said Greater Manchester had bought more than five times the amount of buses from Alexander Dennis than had been purchased to serve the industry in Scotland. But ultimately in Scotland it is down to private bus companies to decide which manufacturers they wish to buy their vehicles from – not the Scottish Government. Naturally, those fighting to prevent the proposed cuts in Falkirk are urging Scottish ministers to do all they can to stop or limit the amount of redundancies during the consultation period that is now under way. Perhaps there is some financial incentive that can be offered to entice NFI to change its mind, but it is hard to be optimistic. Paul Davies, president and managing director of Alexander Dennis, hinted at the limitations of UK policy when the proposed cuts were announced on Wednesday. 'While stakeholders have been sympathetic of the situation, the stark reality is that current UK policy does not allow for the incentivisation or reward of local content, job retention and creation, nor does it encourage any domestic economic benefit,' he said. 'We have warned of the competitive imbalance for some time and would like to see policy and legislative changes that incentivise the delivery of local benefit where taxpayer money is invested. We strongly believe funding that supports public transport should lead to investment in local jobs, domestic supply chains, technology creation and a recurrent tax base.' There is a certain, painful irony to the situation too. While the Grangemouth refinery was declared by Petroineos to be no longer financially viable in the face of global competition and the drive to net zero, the Alexander Dennis site in Falkirk has been involved in the production of buses powered by electrical batteries and hydrogen, in other words at the cutting edge of modern transport technology. As veteran Scottish politician Kenny MacAskill, leader of the Alba Party, noted, it is 'perverse when Scotland is awash with renewable energy and is the base for the UK's green hydrogen that a company specialising in hydrogen buses is forced to relocate elsewhere'. Sadly, past experience in Scotland suggests that once a company decides to close operations, there is no going back. Petroineos could not be persuaded to change course at Grangemouth, and back in 2009 Diageo proceeded to shut down its Johnnie Walker plant in Kilmarnock despite significant protests at the time. It looks for all the world that the proposed cuts at Alexander Dennis are destined to become another sad chapter in Scottish industrial history, and one that will be especially poignant given the company's proud and long manufacturing legacy.
