Leisure firm sales strong ahead of national roll-out
THE North East company behind the expanding Stack leisure brand chalked up sales of £11.34m in a year which saw it restructure ahead of a national roll-out for its flagship drinking and dining destination venture.
Newcastle based Danieli Holdings was last year toasting record revenues of £37m for its 2022 financial year, as its shipping container destination venue Stack and other leisure sites – including The Muddler restaurants, Yolo Town House Newcastle and Yolo Ponteland – enjoyed a post-pandemic bounce-back following the end of Covid lockdowns.
Since then, the company has undergone a number of changes, including the closure of the original Stack Newcastle to make way for the new HMRC office development and the sale of its door supervision business, Phoenix Security.
A restructure in 2022 brought most of the businesses, which includes Home Care Plus and specialised security and facilities services, Phoenix FMS, under a new firm, Danieli Group.
Stack – the fast-growing leisure hub side of the business – now comes under the umbrella of The Hold Group, led by Neill Winch, and following the year end the business secured a significant investment package from Kings Park Capital to help ramp its plans for a national rollout.
The investment will see Stack sites take shape in towns and cities across the UK including in Middlesbrough, Lincoln, Bishop Auckland, Durham, Whitley Bay, Carlisle, Manchester, Lincoln and Sheffield – and Mr Winch has also said the drinking, dining and entertainment concept has the potential to work overseas.
Now published accounts for the year ended April 2023 for Danieli Group, which had 689 employees in the year, show turnover of £9.8m and an operating loss of £268,958, but founder and CEO Neill Winch said the firm’s first set of accounts don’t accurately reflect the new trading operation, having been affected by the events in the period of 2022 to 2023.
He said the closure of Stack Newcastle in May 2022 meant that two of the company’s other firms, Stack Trading Ltd and Stack Containers Ltd, did not trade at all in the following financial year. At the same time, the sale of Phoenix Security – the door security arm of Phoenix Eye Limited – to a Leeds business meant that the significant income from that part of the business no longer contributed to the turnover.
Phoenix Eye has now been renamed Phoenix FMS and concentrates on providing facilities management and security services for everything from construction sites to major events. Mr Winch said that, given the current status of the economy, he is cautiously optimistic about future trading
He said: “Danieli Group Limited was created in September 2022, which means that turnover attributable to group companies for the period May 1 2022 to September 12, 2022 (£11,731,141) is not shown in the published financial accounts.
“While on the surface the accounts may show very different figures from the previous years, in fact they do not represent like-for-like trade among group companies and in fact our turnover remains the same, around £11.4m.
“The group had an Ebitda of £4.1m for the year, which the directors believe is a significant achievement for a business undergoing such major changes.
“The restructuring of the business is in anticipation of the exciting and ambitious plans to expand the Stack Group.”