Building materials firm Lords Group buys rival CMO in rescue deal
London-listed firm Lords said it acquired the 'trade and assets' of CMO for around £1.8 million as part of a pre-pack administration.
The deal will secure the future of around 120 workers at Plymouth-based CMO, who will join the wider Lords group.
CMO, which was founded in 2008 as Construction Materials Online, sells more than 140,000 products to trade professionals and households through a raft of specialist superstore-branded websites.The company was listed on London's AIM junior stock market until February, when it delisted in order to help preserve funds.
The firms highlighted that the deal will not include the Tiles business previously owned by CMO.
Dean Murray, chief executive of CMO, said: 'The acquisition marks a new and exciting chapter for CMO.
'We have built a strong, digitally-led business over the past 15 years, and in Lords, we have found a partner that not only understands our model but shares our ambition.
'I am incredibly proud of what the CMO team has achieved and excited about what is next.'
Shanker Patel, chief executive of Lords, said: 'We are delighted to welcome CMO into the Lords family.
'CMO brings a well-established digital platform, strong customer reach, and a specialist product-led approach that complements our own.
'This partnership allows us to blend traditional merchanting strengths with cutting-edge digital capabilities.
'We are also mindful of the impact of the pre-pack administration process on affected parties and are committed to conducting the transition with respect.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Scotsman
an hour ago
- Scotsman
Inside independent Scottish single malt bottling and interesting drams from the whisky industry's approach
Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Blending whisky has been going on for centuries in Scotland - and with it the trading of casks. This has resulted in the creation of many independent bottler businesses in and outwith Scotland. Often seen as disruptive to stand-alone distilleries or big name brands, these firms are creative and often agile businesses that are making some seriously interesting drams . It's all about knowing your customer, price point and quality of liquid. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Dawn Davies, buying director at The Whisky Exchange, explained what to look out for as a customer, saying: 'There are a lot of independent bottlers out there who do not understand the liquid and are putting out some really bad quality and many who are just bottling the same brands time and time again and have not done research into pricing or what the category needs. 'There are, however, really good ones that do have great liquid at a fair price. When it comes to independent bottlings, the customer really has to do their due diligence to make sure that they can trust what they are buying. But by investing this time they can uncover some excellent bottlings.' Dawn Davies of The Whisky Exchange said: "My absolute favourite to date are our Whisky Show Bottlings from 2024 which featured some of our fabulous staff on the label! We bottled these as part of our #WeAreWhisky campaign to hero the people that make whisky so special." | The Whisky Exchange One of these is Fife-based Lady of the Glen, which does four outruns a year. Within each outrun, the firm has about six casks. Balance and customer taste is in mind with every release. Director Gregor Hannah said: 'Within the outrun we try to follow five principles - one, it's not from a distillery we have bottled in the last 12 months. Two, we have a peated release. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Three, we have a strong finish or Port or Sherry finish whisky. Four, we have something older, so over 20 years old and five, something that is relatively low priced. Ultimately, we want a good, well balanced spirit within each of the releases. This means we have something for everyone within each outrun.' For Sam Simmons, head of whisky of That Boutique-y Whisky Company (TBWC), it's all about creating whisky that you want to share. He said: 'It's always about finding the next 'holy s**t you have to try this' drinking experience, whether it's a 42-year-old unnamed Tomatin or a three-year-old rye from Australia. Good, bad, or mind-blowingly great, if a whisky makes you want to enthusiastically share what's in your glass with a like-minded whisky lover, that's a Boutique-y.' Independent bottlers buy casks of whisky directly from distilleries and are then free to do what they wish with the casks and liquid, such as re-racking, cask finishing or just leaving the liquid in cask for longer. The whisky will then be bottled and sold under the bottler's own brand, often with no mention of the distillery. This can give the freedom and opportunity for a wider variety of products and expressions. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Dawn Davies, Buying Director, The Whisky Exchange | The Whisky Exchange Mr Hannah said of the excitement about being able to bottle something from a famous distillery: '[It's] being able to illustrate how the distillate character has changed or is different from the official bottling version or taking a risk with a single cask and re-racking it into something the distillery couldn't risk doing with a large release of thousands of bottles. We can try it with a single cask because, why not? 'However, I would say distillate character being expressed in different circumstances is always interesting because it's like listening to David Bowie in different eras. It's the same, but then it's not.' Mr Simmons added: 'Beyond taste, the package and labels of indie bottlers are often pop art in themselves and are able to tell stories in ways many distillery bottlings simply cannot. When TBWC began 13 years ago, there were few doing this, but today there are many excellent examples of this benefit of indies.' As with anything whisky, there are some common misconceptions - one of which is that independent bottlers are not as good as a big single malt brand. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Graeme Mackeddie, master blender at Morrison Scotch Whisky Distillers, said: 'People often think that independently bottled spirits are somehow inferior to their 'official' counterparts. The truth is often the opposite, with independent bottlings of whiskies being presented naturally, free of artificial colouring, and without chill filtration. Very often these whiskies will be presented at slightly higher strengths or perhaps at natural cask strength.' Mr Simmons added: 'There is a misconception that independent bottling is not part of the long standing eco-system of whisky production in Scotland and are instead somewhat malignant, parasitic and harmful. I have long believed that indie bottlers are big whisky's greatest advocates and assets.' The past five to ten years have seen the opening of some new and exciting Scotch whisky distilleries, which means potential casks of liquid from these winging their way to independent bottlers. So which are they most excited to work with? Ms Davies said: 'There are a lot from non-traditional countries that are exciting at the moment. We're also finding gems like Clynelish back on the market. In fact, we worked with Signatory Vintage to release a 17-year-old Clynelish earlier this year, which sold out almost immediately when we launched it online.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Graeme Mackeddie, Morrison Scotch Whisky Distillers | Morrison Scotch Whisky Distillers Mr Hannah added: 'I genuinely get excited when we receive stock from any distillery. Even the young stuff, where you can taste the raw character, but you can chat with colleagues around the cask about what could make this better, is it just time or will it benefit from a re-rack in a particular style of cask? Those are exciting days.' Mr Simmons said: 'Holyrood, Dornoch, Ardnamurchan and the incredible Inchdairnie are high on my list and we're big fans.' Lady of the Glen Craigellachie bottling | Lady of the Glen
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Whitehall's ambition to cut costs using AI is fraught with risk
A Dragons' Den-style event this week, where tech companies will have 20 minutes to pitch ideas for increasing automation in the British justice system, is one of numerous examples of how the cash-strapped Labour government hopes artificial intelligence and data science can save money and improve public services. Amid warnings from critics that Downing Street has been 'drinking the Kool-Aid' on AI, the Department of Health and Social Care this week announced an AI early warning system to detect dangerous maternity services after a series of scandals, and Wes Streeting, the health secretary, said he wants one in eight operations to be conducted by a robot within a decade. AI is being used to prioritise actions on the 25,000 pieces of correspondence the Department for Work and Pensions receives each day and to detect potential fraud and error in benefit claims. Ministers even have access to an AI tool that is supposed to provide a 'vibe check' on parliamentary opinion to help them weigh the political risks of policy proposals. Again and again, ministers are turning to technology to tackle acute crises that in the past might have been dealt with by employing more staff or investing more money. The push to digitise government, which is led by the prime minister, Keir Starmer, and his science and technology secretary, Peter Kyle, has brought the government into close contact with the biggest US tech companies. Google, Microsoft, Palantir, IBM and Amazon were all in attendance at a Ministry of Justice roundtable discussion last month. Starmer and Kyle are not alone. Countries from Singapore to Estonia have been increasingly embracing AI in public service delivery. Jeegar Kakkad, a director at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change – one of the organisations arguing for greater use of technology and which is part-funded by tech firms – put the argument like this: 'Our systems are broken. They cannot keep up with demand. You have a couple of choices: keep trying to make a broken system work with traditional approaches – more money, more immigrants to fill the gap in the workforce – or you have to use technology. 'I think the answer is technology, but we have to make sure we have agency in how we design these systems, they are human-designed and we put rules in place.' Kyle has recently been at pains to stress that the government is doing everything it can to enable big tech firms to thrive in Britain. At London Tech Week last month, he told executives about regulation and planning policies designed to make their businesses run better, saying: 'All of this adds up to a government that is on your side.' When it comes to injecting technology into public services, ministers face a choice: whether to 'build or buy'. The temptation is often to issue contracts to private companies to achieve the fastest and greatest impact. For the tech companies, a huge pot of revenue is at stake. The value of UK public sector tech contracts rose to £19.6bn last year, up from £14.4bn in 2019, according to Tussell, which researches government contracts. But introducing AI and automation into public services is riskier than using it to help drivers navigate busy roads or recommending songs to music fans. When citizens interact with public services they are often at their most vulnerable. For example, last week the Ada Lovelace Institute, an independent research body, found that 59% of the public were concerned about the idea of AI being used to assess welfare eligibility, compared with 39% of people worried about the use of facial recognition technology in policing. And the public is also showing signs of concern about the motivations of private technology companies. The same polling found the public was significantly less likely to trust private companies to deliver technology that could assess welfare eligibility or predict the risk of cancer than government bodies (although governments are less trusted than academics and not-for-profits). The institute urged MPs to launch a review of the 'role of technology companies and the bodies funded by them in shaping the policy and media narrative on the benefits of public sector AI; and the effectiveness of existing measures that aim to tackle conflicts of interest and 'revolving door' dynamics between government and the technology sector'. It said: 'At a time when AI is being offered as a solution to a wide range of public sector problems, the public are concerned about the motivations of private sector involvement. The public expects transparency and that public sector AI prioritises people over profit.'
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Tech firms suggested placing trackers under offenders' skin at meeting with justice secretary
Tracking devices inserted under offenders' skin, robots assigned to contain prisoners and driverless vehicles used to transport them were among the measures proposed by technology companies to ministers who are gathering ideas to tackle the crisis in the UK justice system. The proposals were made at a meeting of more than two dozen tech companies in London last month, chaired by the justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, minutes seen by the Guardian show. Amid an acute shortage of prison places and probation officers under severe strain, ministers told the companies they wanted ideas for using wearable technologies, behaviour monitoring and geolocation to create a 'prison outside of prison'. Those present included representatives of Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Palantir, which works closely with the US military and has contracts with the NHS. IBM and the private prison operator Serco also attended alongside tagging and biometric companies, according to a response to a freedom of information request. Mahmood told the tech companies she wants 'deeper collaboration between government and tech to solve the prison capacity crisis, reduce reoffending and make communities safer'. She invited them to 'scale and improve' the existing use of tagging 'not just for monitoring but to drive rehabilitation and reduce crime'. The prisons minister, James Timpson, called for a 'tech-led approach to justice'. The initiative is the latest sign of the Labour government's embrace of the technology industry to help deliver efficiency savings in creaking public services from schools to hospitals. In January, Keir Starmer declared that AI was a way 'to transform our public services' and spoke about 'totally rewiring government'. The push by the Ministry of Justice follows last month's review of sentencing by the former justice secretary David Gauke, which called for fewer short prison sentences and the greater use of AI as well as possible wider use of facial recognition technology in public to help cut the overcrowded prison population by almost 10,000. At the meeting last month, which was hosted by the industry lobby group Tech UK, ministers asked the tech companies what a 'digital, data and technology-enabled justice system' could look like in 2050. Responses included: 'Real-time behaviour monitoring and subcutaneous tracking' to support the health, and 'behaviour management' of people under the control of the criminal justice system; artificial intelligence advisers to support offenders' rehabilitation; and robotics 'used to manage prisoner movement and containment' including 'self-driving vehicles [to] transport prisoners'. Human rights campaigners called the ideas 'alarmingly dystopian' and warned that the meeting suggested the government may be 'getting too close to the tech giants'. A second meeting with tech companies is scheduled for Tuesday, with Lord Timpson due to hear 20-minute pitches for new ideas at what officials are calling an 'innovation den'. A government source stressed the ideas raised so far were hypothetical talking points to bring about conversations about the future of offender management to better protect the public. The justice secretary has previously said she is 'not squeamish' about using technology such as 'gait recognition', a type of biometric monitoring of humans' unique movement patterns, which some believe could help prevent violence in jails before it happens. An MoJ spokesperson said: 'As the public would rightly expect, we continue to explore technology that will help us cut crime, effectively monitor offenders and keep the public safe.' Donald Campbell, the director of advocacy at Foxglove, a non-profit organisation campaigning for fairer use of technology which obtained the FoI response, called the suggestions 'alarmingly dystopian'. 'It is chilling to know that justice ministers have sat with the tech sector to discuss using robots to manage prisoners, implanting devices under people's skin to track their behaviour, or using computers to 'predict' what they will do in future,' he said. Other suggestions from the tech companies included using high-powered quantum computers to 'analyse past data to predict future behaviours and create diversion paths' and to automate sentencing calculations in the overstretched probation service. But there were also fears raised about the consequences of relying too much on technology. One response recorded in minutes was that: 'If misapplied, these technologies could lead to dystopian outcomes that are difficult to reverse.' Campbell said: 'The idea that tech companies can produce tools to 'predict' crime has been discredited time and again – it is disappointing to see that they are continuing to push it – and that the MoJ is so willing to listen.' Tech UK, which hosted the meeting, said it was part of efforts to create a fairer, better and more effective justice system. A spokesperson said: 'It is essential that the future of justice is shaped with transparency, accountability, and public trust at its core.' Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and Palantir did not respond to requests for comment. Serco said: 'We will not be commenting on this activity'.
