APEM Group completes acquisition of Aspect Ecology
APEM Group has completed its sixth acquisition in 24 months. The purchase of Aspect Ecology takes Apem’s headcount past the 600-mark.
Aspect Ecology is a multi-disciplinary consultancy, providing services relating to ecology, landscape planning and arboriculture. The firm works with clients from pre-purchase site acquisition through planning and appeals, to post planning on the ground implementation of mitigation works, including ecological licensing for protected species.
As APEM Group continues to grow its operations, since an injection of funds from WestBridge in 2021, it has added Aspect Ecology’s more-than 40 ecologists to its terrestrial ecology team. APEM now has more than 600 experts at its disposal across all its offices.
Leah McGimpsey, APEM Group CEO, said, “Aspect Ecology bring deep expertise in terrestrial ecology to the Group, building on our existing market-leading capabilities and significantly increasing our strength and depth. This acquisition provides substantial opportunity to continue our expansion into the infrastructure and built environment market. As the need for clean infrastructure increases, Aspect’s knowledge and work with clients in assessing the biodiversity of a developer’s plans and how to deliver Biodiversity Net Gain solutions, will be of real value to APEM’s own clients.”
The deal will see co-founder Alistair Baxter and the team at Aspect Ecology join APEM to help provide solutions through innovative design and imaginative thinking. Both firms will also open themselves up to shared learning across their combined terrestrial team, which will help bring best practice to their clients.
Baxter, who is a senior director at Aspect Ecology, commented, “Being part of the APEM Group will provide great opportunities for the Aspect Ecology team and allows us to take forward our current operations with the added support of the Group infrastructure. APEM’S culture of high quality work mirrors that of Aspect Ecology’s so that our approaches are fully aligned. Joining forces with APEM will enable us to access new markets and offer additional services to our clients as well as more rapidly develop our technological capabilities aided by APEM’s market leading position.”
With employees in the UK, Ireland, Australia, Germany and the USA, the APEM Group provide independent environmental consultancy and expert advice to a wide range of industries including water, renewables, power and utilities, marine and ports, transport, construction and development.
The arrival of Aspect Ecology adds to five other acquisitions since July 2021, when APEM acquired Sligo-based Woodrow, an environmental and sustainability consultancy. This was followed in February 2022 by the acquisition of AQUAFACT, a specialist in marine surveys, based in Galway, Ireland. In May 2022, APEM acquired GoBe Consultants, a planning and environmental services consultancy based in Devon and Glasgow, followed by the acquisition in June 2023 of Macro Works, a Dublin based provider of landscape and visual consultancy services, and NASH Maritime, a leading shipping, navigation and maritime risk consultancy based in Southampton, in July 2023.