New Mills Scotland Limited

NEW MILLS
SCOTLAND LIMITED

Long-term investors providing permanent capital to the UK lower mid-market

THE FIRM

We Buy Exceptional Companies And Grow Them for the Long Term

ABOUT US

New Mills Scotland Limited is an entrepreneurial private equity firm, run by an operator rather than a fund manager. Its founder, Scott MacDonald, spent twenty years delivering transformation and turnaround work at C-suite level for some of the largest businesses in the UK and internationally. He now buys for his own portfolio, bringing that discipline to companies at SME scale, where it is rarely available.

WHAT MAKES US UNIQUE

We are privately funded, with no limited partners and no fund structure. That lets us work alongside the management teams of the businesses we buy and focus on their long-term health, free of the horizon a fund inevitably imposes. Where speed matters, decisions are made in days rather than weeks. Surplus profits are reinvested into the companies we own or held as permanent capital for the next acquisition.

FROM CONSULTANCY TO OWNERSHIp

The same work, on the other side of the table

Scott MacDonald delivered twenty years of transformation and turnaround work for other organisations; the firm now applies that capability to businesses it owns outright.

Then

Consultancy

Transformation and change delivered into other people’s businesses, sold by the day and handed back at the end of the programme.

THE SHIFT

Advisory at the top table

Reporting to and advising CIOs, COOs and CEOs on their hardest problems — and watching how much value was added back into their business.

Now

Permanent ownership

The same discipline deployed permanently, into companies acquired and held. Nothing is handed back, because there is no one to hand it back to.

Capability that was previously sold by the day is now deployed permanently, into companies the firm owns.

The Team

Scott MacDonald - Founder & Principal

Scott MacDonald

Founder & Principal

Twenty years running transformation and turnaround at C-suite level, CIO, COO and CEO, across manufacturing, telecoms, banking, life & pensions, utilities, food, water and clinical research.

He has led the technology integration of a £12bn acquisition, run a ~£50m change portfolio, taken a loss-making manufacturing and construction business to profit, and grown a consultancy line from £100k to £5m. He has delivered over a £1bn of change and transformation globally.

Every acquisition is run by Scott.

P&L Ownership

Ran organisations from £1M to £40M in revenue across multiple industries and multiple countries.

No.1 Bestselling Author & Advisor to Elite Performers

“Peak Performance: Mindset Tools for Athletes” reached No.1 in five countries. Works with elite athletes, serial entrepreneurs, special forces personnel and senior leaders across large organisations.

Acquisitions

3,500 systems and 40,000 people merged into a single operating business — the world's largest clinical research organisation.

Both sides of a transaction

Sat on the senior leadership team of a leading management consultancy firm through its 2020 acquisition and integration.

Track Record

Operating at scale, under zero-tolerance conditions

A career spent turning around, integrating and running businesses — across manufacturing, telecoms, banking, life & pensions, utilities, food and clinical research.

BT

Ran major technology and transformation programmes worth £50–100m. Led technology rollout across ~2,500 engineers and ran the operations centre for the UK’s 999 emergency service — 300–400 staff, zero tolerance for error.

RBS

Ran IT testing and assurance for a global team of ~300 people in a highly regulated environment — accountable for testing every change before it hit the bank.

Standard Life

Ran a ~£50m change and transformation portfolio, including modernising a largely manual legacy contact centre through workflow, process re-engineering and change management — lifting performance while taking the team through the transition.

Running P&L

Loss-making to profitable

Hired to manage a loss-making manufacturing and construction business, ran the P&L and turned it profitable.

£100k → £5m

Grew a consultancy business line more than fiftyfold.

Teams of up to 1,000

Led teams of up to 1,000 people across multiple countries and cultures.

EXPERIENCE

M&A from every side of the table

THE INTEGRATOR

Led the technology application integration of a £12bn acquisition, creating the world’s largest clinical research organisation — 3,500 systems, 40,000 people, merged into one operating business.

THE ACQUIRED

Scott sat on the senior leadership team through the acquisition and integration of the multi 7-figure Management Consultancy firm he worked for — he has lived the seller’s side of the table, not just read about it.

THE BUYER

Now buy businesses that already work — bringing the discipline, systems and pace of a much larger organisation, whatever stage the business is already at. It’s not about experimenting with what's already working; it’s professionalising it further to grow revenue and profitability

“I have been the integrator, and I have been part of the business being acquired. Now I’m excited to be the buyer.”

Scott MacDonald

TECHNOLOGY & INTEGRATION

The sharpest edge

Integrating systems and organisations is core to the acquisition strategy - and Scott has done it at both large and small scale.

In his first job out of university he worked alongside a coder to build the company’s first-ever construction estimating and workflow tool from scratch. He has been building and integrating systems his entire career.

Hands-on delivery, not strategy decks

ERP, CRM, HR, estimating and workflow systems implemented across almost every industry he has worked in.

Credible and current on AI adoption

Clear on where it genuinely creates leverage in an SME — and where it is hype.

Direct CIO advisory relationships

Trusted across multiple organisations on technology strategy and delivery.

Scaling delivery without breaking the economics

Built the resourcing and forecasting model for a 2,500-strong field engineering force — weather, truck location, customer history and engineer skill set, all at once.

Technological Integration at scale

3,500 systems and 40,000 people merged into a single operating business - the world's largest clinical research organisation.

BEYOND THE CHEQUE

What comes with the capital

Governance, controls and KPIs

Most SMEs are run on instinct. The firm installs the reporting, controls and operating rhythm that make a business scalable — and, in time, sellable.

A people-first operator

Twenty years spent building and growing teams, backed by a formal grounding in performance coaching. To a seller their team is family — the intention is to protect what works, not replace it.

Breadth over narrow depth

Twenty years across telecoms, utilities, construction, food, pensions, insurance, banking, water and clinical research. The edge is spotting the patterns that hold true whatever the sector.

Prior experience of this exact business is not the requirement.

Some buyers bring deep single-sector knowledge. New Mills brings the best of what works from across all of them — and, more importantly, knows how to implement it.

Our Acquisition Criteria

Acquisition Criteria

What New Mills is looking for

The firm pursues established, profitable UK businesses that meet or exceed the following criteria:

Established

20+ years of continuous trading — a business that has already proven it survives downturns

Healthy Profits

EBITDA of £0.5M - £1M

Management In Place

An ambitious team with a positive culture and an ethical approach

Strong Cash Conversion

Recurring, contracted revenue that converts to cash

Recession-Proof

Demand that holds through the cycle, not with it

Limited Concentration

Customer concentration <25%; supplier concentration <40%

Asset-Backed

Tangible assets, ideally including owned premises

Motivated Seller

A genuine reason to sell — retirement being the most common

Location

Ideally within two hours of Edinburgh; willing to acquire UK-wide

The Thinking Behind Them

Why these criteria, and not others

01

Management in place is the linchpin

The firm runs as an investor-owner. A capable management team in place is therefore non-negotiable — it is what allows every other criterion to do its job.

02

Earnings that hold through a cycle

Recurring contracted revenue, a diverse customer base and a recession-proof model are what make forecast earnings believable rather than hopeful.

03

20+ years is a proxy for resilience

A business that has traded for two decades or more has already been tested by recessions, rate cycles and shocks. That history is evidence no financial model can substitute for.

04

Asset-backed works for the seller too

Owned premises and machinery are a significant advantage. The buyer controls the site the business operates from and the equipment it runs on — the two things hardest to replace and most damaging to lose.

A NOTE FOR BROKERS

The criteria above are all that is needed to start scoring deals. Where a business meets most but not all of them, bring it anyway — the shortfall is a structuring question, not an automatic no.

WHY OWNERS SELL TO US

A decision about a life’s work, not a process

Most of the businesses we buy have never been sold before. The owner has spent twenty or thirty years building something, employs people they know by name, and has watched a competitor get bought and hollowed out. They are not running a process — they are making a decision about what happens to their life’s work.

A name, not a recruitment plan

We are frequently the only bidder who can answer “who is actually going to run this on Monday?” with a name and a face.

Our own capital

We write our own equity checks and we close on the terms we opened with. No syndication risk, no fund timetable, no borrowed conviction.

No eleventh-hour renegotiation

We do not renegotiate on the eve of completion because a credit committee got nervous. The price we agree is the price we pay.

Sellers are choosing a successor, not just a price. That is the question we are built to answer.

THE FIRST 90 DAYS

A safe pair of hands, not a hatchet

What a seller really wants to know is what happens to the business and the people the day after completion. This is the answer.

Stabilise first

Understand the management structure and secure the key people before changing anything.

Get visibility early

Stand up a simple performance dashboard so decisions are based on facts, not noise.

Full operational review

People, customers, systems and finances — reviewed properly before any lever is pulled.

Communicate clearly

With the team and with customers, so the transition feels like continuity, not upheaval.

Separate quick wins from deep change

Easy improvements go fast; anything structural becomes a properly planned change programme.

Stabilise → Measure → Review → Communicate → Improve

GET IN TOUCH

Actively acquiring, and ready to move.

Founder & Managing Director

Scott MacDonald

Founder & Managing Director, New Mills Scotland Limited
Edinburgh, Scotland
scott.macdonald@newmillsholdings.com

ORIGINATION & DEAL ENQUIRIES

Charlie Ellis

Acquisition Advisory Limited