Tigers Childcare has secured €5m debt finance from DunPort Capital Management to fuel its expansion in Ireland and the UK.

With 13 centres in Dublin and Meath, Tigers Childcare is one of the largest childcare providers in Ireland, catering for 1,250 children and employing 162 staff.

In February the company will open its first overseas facility in London as part of a new urban regeneration project in Elephant and Castle. This follows a successful tender win to operate a new 7,000sq ft centre owned by multinational property group, Lendlease.

DunPort Capital Management will provide funding by way of debt capital to help support the company’s expansion in the greater Dublin and London.

DunPort is an Irish-owned and managed asset management platform founded in 2017 by Pat Walsh and Ross Morrow, former senior executives of BlueBay Asset Management. It has so far deployed over €500m in debt capital across a wide range of industries in support of growth and acquisition initiatives.

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Tigers Childcare founder and managing director of Karen Clince commented: “ Our plan is to continue to build on the number of Tigers Childcare centres in Dublin and its surrounds, through a combination of acquisitions and new centre openings, and cater for the increased demand for both full day care and after-school services.”

Clince added that all Tigers Childcare are fully qualified in early-years care and education, with senior staff qualified to degree level. In the UK only 50% childcare employees need to be qualified.

DunPort director Ross Morrow said: “The sector is of critical importance to the underpinning of the broader economy and Tigers is well placed, as a leading player of scale and quality, to grow its service offering to help address the current level of under-capacity in the sector.”

In 2017 Tigers Childcare announced the acquisition of three centres from multinational childcare provider, Bright Horizons expanding its reach into South Dublin. The company says that all of its Irish centres are operating at full capacity.

DunPort says it seeks to support established businesses across a wide range of sectors that require flexible capital to fund the scaling of their activities through investment and development expenditure or acquisitions. In addition, it can support management buy outs, buy and build strategies and recapitalisations, including money out to existing shareholders.

Photo: Karen Clince with Tigers Childcare chairman Cormac Tobin, and Lilah Mahon. (Pic: Conor McCabe)