Stark is the leading distributor of heavy building materials, tools, hardware, timber and panels in Denmark. Stark’s customers include both professional contractors and DIY builders with around half of stores having a dedicated DIY section. Stark’s market leadership and its efficiencies of scale have historically delivered strong results. During the year we made two small acquisitions and Stark continued to focus on growing its market share.

Beijer is the leading distributor of building materials in Sweden. About half its revenue comes from local building contractors and another third from retail consumers. As the Swedish market is very fragmented, Beijer’s reach is valuable to vendors, and by maintaining efficiencies of scale and working capital management delivers strong trading results.

Starkki is a Finnish chain of builders’ merchants with a format based on large stores and well-trained specialist staff. Whilst local building contractors are the largest single customer segment, consumers and small retail stores generate nearly 40 per cent of its revenue. Starkki has a strong record of excellent profitability based on a very low cost base.

Silvan is a DIY and retail chain in Denmark, focussed on serving customers with building materials for the RMI market. The majority of Silvan’s product range overlaps with other businesses in the Nordic region and therefore the business delivers significant synergies by taking advantage of these economies of scale.

The other business units in the region include the following:

• Neumann Bygg, a distributor of building materials in Norway
• Cheapy, a DIY chain in Sweden