Troy UK, the tooling and industrial supplies buying group, has received a £25 million funding package from Santander UK to fulfil its growth plans over the next five years.

The Exeter-headquartered group was established in 1986, and provides buying power to its members on a range of products from more than 400 suppliers that span. The group also supports its membership with a team of specialists and bespoke services that help the independent members to scale and grow. 

The group’s revenue has grown from £30 million to £300 million over the past decade. Its growth has been driven by acquisitions following a vertical integration strategy, as well as acquiring the THS Group in 2017, and organically, by attracting new members and supporting them to grow. Its membership has grown from 80 in 2010 to 403 currently.

The group’s five-year business strategy focuses on achieving continued growth by supporting its current members, attracting new members, increasing wholesale trade through a white label offering via its Trojan Tools Ltd business, and further acquisitions.

As part of its work to support its members to grow their businesses, it has launched exclusive business solutions to help them compete with their national competitors. These include providing members with white labelled, fully transactional e-commerce websites that integrate with their counter and trade catalogue sales, with Troy UK providing back-end website technical support and expertise for free.

Simon Whyatt, Relationship Director at Santander UK, said: “Thanks to its many years of experience and strong focus on customer service, our long-time client Troy UK has done a brilliant job of growing solidly over the past year despite the challenges posed by the pandemic.

“We are delighted to provide it with this latest funding package which complements the day-to-day banking support, trade finance, property loans and foreign exchange services we have provided it over the past decade.”

Paul Kilbride, CEO of Troy UK, said: “We have banked transactionally with Santander UK for many years and established a brilliant relationship with the team at the bank. When there was an opportunity to move our funding, my first port of call was Santander UK because the team has inspired such confidence as a banking partner over the past years.”