The deal backs the existing owners, CEO Dougie McGilvray and his family, to continue expanding the business, which Dunedin says is the largest crawler crane hire company in the UK. NVM Private Equity is exiting its investment in Weldex via the transaction.

Mark Ligertwood, a director at Dunedin who led the deal for the firm, joins the board of Weldex. He comments, ‘We have tracked the progress of this business for a considerable time and have been impressed at the way it has continued to grow through the recession by focusing on large, complex infrastructure projects and the offshore wind power industry.’

McGilvray, who founded Weldex in 1979, remarks, ‘We have a strong order book and good visibility on forward orders for the larger cranes, particularly for those being used in the renewable energy and power plant sectors for which demand is expected to increase in the UK.

‘Our headquarters remain in Inverness and the McGilvray family remain fully involved in the day to day running of the business.’

Dunedin, which raised a buy-out fund of £250 million in 2006, typically invests in management buy-outs and buy-ins with transaction sizes of between £20 million and £75 million.