One of the biggest mobile park home operators in the UK is set to become the largest one in the country. Wyldecrest Parks, valued at £200 million, has added 14 new parks to its portfolio just in the last year. The company’s Chairman Alfie Best spent £13 million in new purchases in the last 12 months and expects to spend up to £17 million on new acquisitions by the end of 2015, turning his park home business into the largest one in the country.
Wyldecrest Parks, which has 43 residential and holiday mobile home parks, is the only nationwide park home operator in the UK, with sites in England, Scotland and Wales, and is already planning a possible future growth to the Irish market as well as an overseas expansion into Portugal and Spain.
“A corporate development through overseas investments is part of a strategy to move our business forward”, guarantees the Chairman, who wishes to see his business doubled by 2021. However, Alfie Best points out that he would like to start it by bringing even more Wyldecrest Parks to the attention of the British people living abroad.
“You always have to keep your eyes open to market opportunities and I personally spend most of my time in our parks across the country and work very close with all our departments”, says Alfie Best. That’s how he has noticed an increase of contacts coming from British people living abroad.
“The number of enquiries we’ve been receiving from British expats has been exponentially increasing over the last few years. Some of them are interested in a residential mobile home, which is an affordable way for them to come back to the UK; others just want a holiday home, to have a UK base to spend time with family and friends whenever they want to”, he explains.
Therefore, to open and improve the “lines of communication” from the UK to the rest of the world is, at the moment, a priority to this Essex-based company. And, according to Alfie Best, Portugal and Spain are at the top of the list due to the number of expats living there and the territorial proximity from the UK.
