Wyevale Garden Centres, one of the largest operators of garden centres in the UK, has released a new strategy that will implement its refinancing to achieve its strategic goals by investing in people, upgrading systems and controls and improving the supply chain process.

A group of lenders including Hayfin, Barclays and Lloyds has provided a £141.5 million debt package to refinance the existing facilities of Terra Firma-backed Wyevale Garden Centres, this will stabilise the capital structure enabling the leadership team to focus on delivering the new strategy, centred on building a better business for customers.

So far in 2017, Wyevale has seen early signs of progress following the implementation of the first phase of its strategy as the business has returned to like-for-like growth. The announcement follows Terra Firma's latest accounts for 2016, which reveal a loss of £122 million.

Wyevale CEO Roger Mclaughlan said: “We have spent a lot of time over the past year in gathering in-depth customer insight and feedback from colleagues across the business. At the heart of our new strategy is enhancing our customer experience by focusing on building and strengthening the fundamentals of our business. There’s been a significant shift in our financial priorities away from acquisitions and other capital intensive growth initiatives to investment in the core infrastructure, systems and processes required to develop a scalable and sustainable platform to underpin the Group’s future growth plans.”

Read the full story in the September 29 issue of DIY Week.