Norwest and Cairellie: official statement

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Official statement: Norwest Productions Pty Limited, a leading provider of audio services in Australia and New Zealand, is pleased to announce today the acquisition of Australia’s specialist event services business, Cairellie Pty Ltd.

Norwest’s Chris Kennedy says the acquisition of Cairellie gives Norwest the ability to broaden its range of services and product offerings for clients in Australia to incorporate lighting, video, staging and communications, something the Norwest group is already doing extremely successfully for its clients in New Zealand. ‘This acquisition is a response to emerging needs of a number of Norwest’s customers in Australia, and our clients can remain confident in our ability to continue to provide a premium service that exceeds our clients expectations’.

Cairellie founders Stephen Knight and David Gleig will retain their existing roles in the Cairellie business, and will join the Norwest Board. Stephen and David see the acquisition as providing existing Cairellie clients with access to a broader range of equipment, expertise, and regional capability across Australasia. They also consider that access to more extensive corporate governance structures and capital resources will enable them to continue to grow the capabilities of the Cairellie business and respond to evolving customer needs.

Norwest Productions, founded exactly 20 years ago this July by Chris Kennedy, has offices in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth in Australia, and in Auckland and Wellington in New Zealand. Private equity fund, Anacacia Capital, invested in Norwest in 2008 providing capital and corporate governance to enable the company to grow rapidly through a mixture of organic growth and strategic acquisition.

Norwest is internationally renowned for its work with the very largest public events including Olympic ceremonies in Sydney, Athens, London and Vancouver, the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne and Delhi, Rugby World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, The Asian Games and Arab Games in Qatar and the inaugural Youth Olympics and several National Day Parades in Singapore. As well as public events the company services corporate events, musical theatre, broadcast, arena concerts, club touring, festivals and dance parties.

Cairellie celebrated 10 years of operation in February this year. Its beginnings go back as far as 1997 as a small business servicing minor live performance events. Stephen Knight and David Gleig, met on one of these events and went on to form Cairellie in 2003. The business focused on the corporate market, which required it to

expand to provide lighting, video and staging in addition to audio. The business model was extremely successful allowing it to grow from humble beginnings to become a well-known market leader supplying full service production.

Both companies will continue operating as normal. Chris Kennedy said ‘We continue to recognize that our different brands across the Norwest Group are extremely important to both our people and our customers, and we are absolutely committed to all these brands, Norwest, Oceania, Cairellie, and Phase-One, going forward’

In the coming month, Norwest will relocate their offices and equipment to Cairellie’s existing North Rocks premises. Contact telephone numbers for both businesses remain unchanged.

Norwest Pty Limited: +61 2 9737 8522 Cairellie Pty Ltd: +61 2 8838 0300