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Our businesses Our markets Our impact Leadership Why invest

Our strategy is to build high-quality, scalable businesses for sustainable organic growth. We invest in specialist businesses and give them the tools to grow so they can keep doing what they do best.

Learn how we’re growing, scaling and delivering value responsibly.

Grow

Our strategy focuses on organic growth in three buckets:

  1. End market exposure

  2. Geographic penetration

  3. Product Extension

We accelerate organic growth through disciplined acquisitions

Scale

Value-add business model at scale

Powerful decentralised group at scale

Scaling our businesses and the Group to sustain growth

DELIVER VALUE RESPONSIBLY

Our strategy supports our businesses in delivering their value-add missions. Our Delivering Value Responsibly (DVR) framework focuses on three themes – our people, doing business responsibly and the environment – through which we can have a meaningful impact.

Sustainability

Download our strategy for more details

Our strategy

Increasing exposure to attractive growth markets

Over the last five years the Group has significantly grown its presence in attractive growth markets, including: 

Aerospace

IVD

Clean energy

Datacentres

Industrial automation

Water

More information

FAST-GROWING MARKETS

Download our growth markets

MEASURING OUR PERFORMANCE

Download KPIs

OUR FINANCIAL MODEL

Why invest

Our Business model Supports Long-Term growth

Our businesses

Our businesses are unique and they deliver success in different ways through our powerful decentralised model. However, there are some common characteristics to all Diploma businesses:

  • A strong-value add customer proposition

  • A clear growth trajectory

  • Delivered by brilliant people with strong leadership

1

Our businesses support customers with technically demanding applications that require critical products and processes. These customers often operate in highly regulated environments with high-cost-of-failure projects.

2

Despite these critical constraints, the products our businesses supply to their customers are typically low component cost and funded from operating expenditure.

3

Typically, our customers require a lot from their distribution partners: expertise and technical support, bespoke solutions, supply chain management, responsive customer service, product range and availability, quality assurance and certification.

4

Our decentralised model means our businesses have empowered leadership, end-to-end accountability, agility and responsiveness, engaged teams, differentiated customer service, local focus and long-term partnerships with customers and suppliers.

The Group

The Corporate Centre supports the effective execution of our strategy, focusing on capital allocation and performance management.

We manage our businesses through three Sectors – Controls, Seals and Life Sciences. Our small Sector leadership teams provide focused leadership and strategic oversight. This structure enables us to grow and scale while preserving the power of our decentralised model.

1

We have a lean central team comprising functional experts who support our businesses to grow and scale, whilst also delivering the compliance and control obligations of a FTSE 100 group.

2

We are a capital-light business, investing around 2% of revenue annually in scaling our businesses by upgrading facilities, enhancing the use of technology and investing in talent. The main use of capital is to make selective acquisitions that will accelerate future organic growth.

3

We have a clear Group strategy to grow, scale and create value responsibly. This translates into strategic plans for each business. These plans are set collaboratively between the corporate centre, the Sector and each business, and each leader is accountable for their delivery.

4

Decentralised doesn't mean isolated. There's great value in business collaboration and the effects of a Group network, such as sharing of expertise, experience and best practice; exploring cross-sell opportunities; leveraging customer and supplier relationships; and benefiting from the reputation and firepower of being part of a large, successful group.