NVM Private Equity portfolio company Kerridge Commercial Systems (KCS) has bought Datawright, which provides material requirements planning (MRP) services for the manufacturing sector.

The management team of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software business KCS originally led a buy-out of the firm back in March 2010 by way of a £9 million deal.

Since then, it has gone on to acquire TIS Software, which trades as Strategix, in October 2011 to boost its ERP offering as part of its plans to increase its presence in the UK and overseas.

The new undisclosed acquisition of Tyne and Wear-based Datawright, KCS says, will allow it to reach new customers and offer additional MRP capabilities to users of its K8 product.

Both companies have known of each other for a number of years and share a common technology platform, KCS CEO Ian Bendelow says.

‘We will immediately set about integrating the two solutions to create a single platform under the new name of KCS Manufacturing Solutions and rebrand the product to reflect the fast that we have now a very clear product strategy.’ he adds.

According to a statement, in the last year, Berkshire-based KCS has achieved a turnover in excess of £25 million from its operations in the UK, Ireland, The Netherlands and South Africa.

Clive Austin, director at NVM Private Equity, originally led the MBO and took a seat on the board of KCS.

He comments, ‘Ian and the team have done a great job of developing the business in the two years since the buy-out.

‘The first acquisition was handled extremely well and we have high hopes for Datawright. We believe the acquisition has strong synergy benefits and will enable KCS to offer new functionality which is increasingly important to its customers.’