An Isle of Man based private equity firm played a role in trucking giant Eddie Stobart heading back on the road to profitability

In the last few days the haulier reported it has returned to profit after cutting costs and benefiting from rising demand for its trucks and warehouses throughout the pandemic.

A £55 million rescue deal was agreed last December, which saw island based private equity firm Dbay Advisors buy a 51% stake in Eddie Stobart Logistics - installing William Stobart as chairman to oversee the turnaround.

DBay is short for Douglas Bay and the firm is based in Athol Street.

In the six months to May 31 revenues fell 1.1% to £416.5 million and underlying pre-tax profits - which exclude any one-off costs - swung from a £6.3 million loss to a £16.6 million profit. Eddie Stobart’s holding company GreenWhiteStar Acquisition (GWSA) executive chairman William Stobart said: ’These results show we have put past challenges firmly behind us.

’The past six months have shown the strength of our differentiated business model, which has allowed us to grow existing customer relationships, win new business, return the GWSA Group to profitability and overcome challenges presented by Covid-19.’

Mr Stobart, son of founder Eddie, retook control of the haulier following an accounting scandal last year where £2 million was unaccounted for.

The iconic green-and-red liveried lorry company said they have dropped loss-making contracts and signed new ones, including one with Morrisons to shuttle products between the supermarket’s distribution centres and stores.

Business News reported that Eddie Stobart shareholders approved the deal with DBay in a bid to secure the future of its 6,500 employees.

Shareholders voted ’overwhelmingly’ in favour of the DBay offer - which had been backed by Eddie Stobart management - and both parties said they intended to complete the move as soon as possible.

At the time a DBay spokesman said: ’We would like to thank shareholders for supporting our transaction, which will bring immediate stability to the business.’

DBay injected approximately £55 million of new financing into the historic distribution company to provide ’necessary liquidity’ to continue to trade.