Kelway to 'reinvigorate' Equanet South from new Hemel home

VAR's new owner sorts new digs for 20 southern staff as it mulls Mancunian options for northern employees

Kelway has already lined up a new satellite office in Hemel Hempstead to house upwards of 20 Equanet staff and plans to "reinvigorate" the business in the coming months and years.

Last week the London-based VAR agreed a deal to acquire the Dixons-owned reseller, with the buyout set to close on 2 April. Kelway managing director Dan Laws told CRN that the 20 or so sales staff operating at Dixons headquarters in the Hertfordshire town would be able to immediately move into new digs nearby.

The office will be Kelway's 12th location in the UK, in addition to operations in Dublin, Dubai, Cape Town and Singapore.

"Like any of our offices, if talent becomes available then we would be interested in growing it," he said. "It is predominantly the old MicroWarehouse business and our aspiration is to try to reinvigorate that a bit."

Further north, Laws explained that his firm has up to six months to find a new home for Equanet's staff based in Bury. He stressed that there were no plans to move staff at Kelway's existing north-west office in Runcorn to wherever the new office is set up, which could be a new site much closer to central Manchester.

"Runcorn is one of our software recovery datacentres so there are no plans to migrate those buildings," he explained. "[A new hub in Manchester city centre] is one of the possibilities that we will consider, alongside moving somewhere much closer to the Bury site or somewhere in between the two."

Laws also refused to be drawn on whether the integration process will entail redundancies for a number of Equanet staff.

"We are only three days in, we do not need to take those decisions now and we would be foolish to do so," he said.