No sooner had Belstaff motorcycle sales manager Steve Robinson finished regaling peripatetic BDN correspondent Alan Dowds with the brand’s plan to raise its apparel game in the “proper” two-wheeled world once more, than their crystal-clear joint narrative vanished down a proverbial rabbit hole before our September issue – in which Dowds’s story appeared – hit the collective readership mat.
It transpired that Sir James Ratcliffe, billionaire supremo of petro-chemical giant Ineos, had just agreed to sell his sideline Belstaff business to blossoming Manchester-based sportswear brand Castore. This transaction took place on 28 August and included Ineos also acquiring a strategic slice of Castore.
According to Financial Times reporter Samuel Agini, the deal marked a latest reconfiguration of Ineos’s consumer investments following a downturn in its core chemicals business and an increase in net debt at other key Ineos divisions. These featured paying $1.6bn for a 29% vanity slice of struggling football club Manchester United and buying Belstaff from JAB Luxury in 2017, as it expanded into sport and consumer industries, all of which are now being scaled back. The Ineos hygienics division, established during the pandemic to make hand sanitiser, was sold off in May, and a wide range of sports sponsorship interests have been cut. Prospects don’t bode well for Manchester United either, given it was recently kicked out of the Carabao Cup by Grimsby Town.
Castore has bought Belstaff from Ineos without taking on its debt or cash. Neither company disclosed finance details. In a statement, Castore chief executive Tom Beahon said the Ineos tie-up was a “demonstration of commitment to our business and global growth ambitions” and praised Ratcliffe for “steering Belstaff into profitability after a challenging period for the retail sector” – suggesting that it had been in difficulties and ripe for disposal anyway. Indeed, Belstaff had booked an £18m annual loss in 2023, the Daily Telegraph revealed.
Beahon and his brother Phil founded new Belstaff parent Castore in 2016 as a challenger to big-league sportswear brands Adidas, Nike and Puma. Castore was valued at £950m in November 2023, following a fundraising exercise led by US investment bank Raine Group. It has worldwide commercial player and fan replica partnerships generating profits across a wide range of ball sports – cricket, football, golf, rugby, tennis etc – plus motorsports on four and two wheels.
The latter span liveried official apparel for the Formula One McLaren and Red Bull teams, plus a solitary intervention in MotoGP to provide official team kit during its 2023 season for Repsol Honda, after it had ditched a relationship with Alpinestars in that role. Hardly a pivotal presence. Obviously, the contrasting chasm between Belstaff’s historic motorcycling stock in trade, centred around waxed cotton waterproof and protective riding apparel with a good dose of purely fashion stuff thrown in, is enormous. Quite how Castore will interface with the average motorcycle dealer may take some explaining.