Planning obstacle for garden firm
ACOUNTY council has been urged to sort out planning issues for a garden furniture company that wants to establish its UK headquarters in mid Wales – or risk losing jobs to England.
Rebo Ltd, which trades as Outdoor Toys, was bought last month by A-Z GartenHaus, a German digital leader in garden homes, sheds, saunas and related products in northern Europe.
3i Group plc, GartenHaus’ parent company, intends to invest around 56m euros (£47m) of additional capital in Outdoor Toys, which was founded in 2006 by businessman James Owen.
Mr Owen, who remains a director of the company after the takeover, has built up Outdoor Toys into one of the largest businesses of its kind in the UK.
Outdoor Toys already has a warehouse at Llansantffraid-Ym-Mechain near Welshpool, specialising in modular toys, including swing sets, slides and climbing frames, as well as ride-on toys, trampolines, sandpits and accessories.
The company operates a vertically integrated value chain with its own product design, UK manufacturing, customer service, dedicated logistics fleet and direct online sales to customers through its own website as well as online marketplaces.
Outdoor Toys has delivered sales growth of 70% per year since 2019 and shipped more than a million items in the past 12 months.
According to 3i, the newly combined business will be able to cross-sell its products to customers as well as benefit from online marketing, customer service and supply chain synergies.
The acquisition is also said to support GartenHaus’s ambition of building the leading European platform for home and garden projects.
When the takeover was announced, Mr Owen said: “We are delighted to be joining forces with GartenHaus to bring our award-winning products to even more customers across Europe.
“We are excited for the future and look forward to continuing to grow Outdoor Toys while benefiting from the knowhow of GartenHaus and its strong platform.”
The company does, however, have a potentially serious problem. Mr Owen established the warehouse near Welshpool without first obtaining planning permission. He claims he experienced difficulty finding a suitable location and the site near Welshpool met the firm’s requirements.
Last year Outdoor Toys sought retrospective planning permission for the site, but was unsuccessful after a number of local objections.
Powys County Council highways officers, for example, said roads in the area were too narrow for two-way traffic, especially lorries.
The firm has submitted another application and in June the county council agreed Outdoor Toys did not need to carry out a detailed environmental impact assessment to go alongside it.
Outdoor Toys did not wish to comment, but Cllr Elwyn Vaughan, who leads Powys council’s Plaid Cymru group, said: “There are planning issues involving the warehouse near Welshpool. However, the company also has a site at Newtown which has no such issues.
“The current business has 77 staff and this is a very welcome investment. I understand the intention is to make this its UK base and create more jobs.
“Naturally I welcome any such investment in Wales and especially the establishment of a new distribution base at Newtown.
“I’d encourage Powys council to meet with the business to ensure that any historical issues are sorted out and to maximise the potential development at Newtown.”
Cllr Vaughan added he was aware that a local authority in England was trying to get Outdoor Toys to relocate to its area.