From water to waste: five Sunday Times 100 firms built through acquisition

Acquisitions have been one of the underlying drivers of growth for a number of the companies named in The Sunday Times 100 2026, the newspaper's annual ranking of Britain's fastest-growing private companies published today. Although the list is often associated with fast-growing consumer brands, several of the companies have accelerated their expansion by buying other businesses. Five stand out as clear examples.

The Sunday Times 100 ranks private companies by compound annual sales growth over their latest three financial years, with qualifying businesses required to be independent, unquoted and profitable. This year's cohort grew sales by an average of 108% a year over three years, to a combined £4 billion, and together employ 13,700 people, having created 8,900 jobs over the period.

Many have grown organically, on the back of social media followings or supermarket listings, but acquisitions have played a significant part for a number of others. The five companies profiled below are among the clearest examples of growth built substantially on dealmaking.

These businesses span sectors from bottled water to estate agency, but share a common approach of buying smaller, often long-established companies to build scale at speed. Their financing has varied, from institutional private equity at Zenzero and a minority investor at SunEnviro to family and founder ownership at Ty Nant and Bramling Workshops.

The highest-placed of the five is Ty Nant, the Bethania-based mineral water producer, which ranks 43rd after growing sales by an average of 91.8% a year to £18.1 million in the year to March. The brand traces its origins to 1976, when a water source was discovered in Ceredigion, west Wales, and was formally launched at the Savoy hotel in London in 1989. It is recognisable for its cobalt-blue bottles and supplies hotels, restaurants and chains including Wagamama.

The company was bought in 2020 by the Sidhu and Nanua family, led by entrepreneurs Raminder Sidhu, Gurinder Sidhu and Bobby Nanua, in a deal that returned it to British ownership. Since then it has assembled a portfolio of water and drinks brands through acquisition. It bought the Pentland Still distillery in 2022 and the Welsh water and mixer brand Llanllyr Source in late 2023, before acquiring Fonthill Water and Decantae Mineral Water from Primo Water at the end of 2024.

In 2025 it bought Strathmore Water from soft drinks group AG Barr, which had owned the brand since 2006. Strathmore continues to be bottled at its site in Forfar, Scotland, where all 23 jobs were retained. The deal added scale and extended the group's geographic reach into Scotland.

Ranked 54th, with three-year average sales growth of 80.5% and group turnover of £28.7 million, is Bramling Workshops, an interiors business based near Canterbury. The group has been assembled piece by piece by Darren Hill, a former joinery apprentice who previously ran the fit-out and construction firms Thompsons and ISG.

Hill made his first move in 2022 with the fit-out contractor DBSJ, now run by his son Laurence Hill as managing director. He added the joinery company Denne Joinery, which traces its origins to 1803, in 2024, followed by Design ID, a hospitality-focused interior design studio. The structure gives the group an integrated offer spanning design, build and joinery.

The enlarged group operates from a 23,000 sq ft manufacturing and finishing site at Bramling, outside Canterbury, employing around 30 craftspeople. Its work has included the refurbishment of co-working space at the redeveloped Battersea Power Station, fit-outs of Hackett menswear stores in cities including Frankfurt, Milan, Paris and Singapore, and the refurbishment of Condé Nast's London office. DBSJ was named Fit-Out Specialist of the Year at the 2024 Construction News Specialists Awards, and on its own reported turnover of around £14.4 million in 2024.

Zenzero, a Coventry-based provider of IT managed services and cybersecurity, ranks 68th after growing sales by an average of 70.5% a year to £103.9 million in the year to March. Founded in 2004 by Anne and Andy Tasker, the company provides IT support, cybersecurity, data and software services to small and medium-sized businesses, a market in which demand has been heightened by high-profile cyberattacks on companies such as Jaguar Land Rover and Harrods.

The business has grown from about 50 staff to 550 since Chief Executive Michael Bateman joined in 2021, expanding through a sustained run of acquisitions. It bought the Aberdeen-based Dynamic Edge Solutions in early 2022, and during its 2024 financial year acquired five further businesses: Mtech, NetTech Solutions, Breachology, Bridge Partners and Resolution IT.

In October 2024 it completed three more deals, paying £43.2 million for a managed services provider in southern England, £8.7 million for one in the Midlands and £3.2 million for one in Scotland. Private equity has underpinned the strategy: Fordhouse Capital backed the company in 2020 before Macquarie Capital took a majority stake in 2023.

Michael Bateman, Chief Executive of Zenzero, said: "As a team, we look forward to building on our success to date .. and continuing to invest in our people, service offerings and high-quality acquisitions."

TAUK, also known as The Agency UK, ranks 74th after average sales growth of 67% to £7.6 million. The London-based company operates a network of self-employed estate agents who run their own businesses under its brand, and was founded in 2020 by Steph Vass, Andy Vass and Mark Bruce. Steph Vass began her career at the age of 15 at her parents' agency and later held roles at Countrywide and Purplebricks in the UK and United States.

In 2023 the company added two board members from the sector, Harry Hill, co-founder of Rightmove and former chief executive of Countrywide, and Kenny Bruce, co-founder of Purplebricks. It has since set out to consolidate the self-employed estate agency sector.

In March 2025 it bought The Estate Agency, founded by Chris Buckler, and in May 2025 it acquired the Cardiff firm Isla Alexander, taking its agent count beyond 200 and making it the second-largest self-employed agency brand in the UK behind eXp UK.

The fifth company, SunEnviro, ranks 81st with three-year average sales growth of 64.1% and turnover of £16.8 million. The Suffolk-based waste management company was founded in Stowmarket in 2020 by managing director Mathew Stewart, drawing on three decades of experience in the waste and recycling industry, and initially focused on skip hire.

In 2022 it sold a minority stake to investor May Capital to fund acquisitions, and has since broadened into waste management, demolition, asbestos removal and site clearance, with demolition handled through its SunDemolition arm. Its deals include Cooks Waste Kare in Ipswich, Advanced Demolition Limited and ADL Skip Hire in Hoddesdon in January 2024, and the Norfolk skip-hire firm Pips Skips, founded in 1992, in June 2024.

Alongside the acquisitions, the company has opened sites in Cambridge and Haverhill and expanded a waste-processing operation in Thetford, as part of a stated aim to divert around 100,000 tonnes of construction and demolition waste from landfill each year.

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