The Irish arm of private equity firm MML Growth Capital Partners has raised €220 million in its latest investment fund.
The private equity firm, which focuses on being the first institutional investor into smaller size Irish businesses, had previously raised €270 million across two funds – €125 million in the first and €145 million in a second fund in 2021. It had anticipated moderate growth in this third fund.
A total of €180 million had been targeted in the latest fundraising but demand was higher than expected, with the company reaching its hard cap of €220 million.
Investors include the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, AIB via Goodbody Capital Partners, the European Investment Fund, the state-owned British Business Bank, Cigna and Symetra.
“We had very, very strong performance in Fund 1, and particularly in Fund 2. We returned a lot of capital to our investors. So, there was an appetite for investors to give us more funding,” said Rory Quirke who set up the Irish wing of the company in 2013 with Neil McGowan.
While the founders said they will continue to focus on investments of between €5 million and €20 million, they said the increased size of their latest fund will allow them to explore larger deals “in the €20 million to €30 million space”.
Mr McGowan said the new fund will allow it to “stay on the journey a little bit further” with the companies they invest in than they had been able to do in previous funds.
Mr McGowan, who began his career with PwC in Dublin before working in the mergers sector in London, spent five years as an investment director with FL Partners before he joined up with Mr Quirke in 2013 to found MML Capital’s Irish division. Prior to joining MML, Mr Quirke had been an executive director of TVC Holdings and was non-executive chairman of Dalata Hotel Group.
Coming out of the Celtic Tiger era, the private equity firm saw a gap in the Irish market to invest in Irish SMEs. “The catalyst was the Development Capital Programme from Enterprise Ireland,” Mr McGowan explained, “There were some really interesting Irish companies that were looking to grow, and this was an opportunity to get in at the ground floor.”
Raising €125 million for their first fund, under the stewardship of Mr McGowan and Mr Quirke, MML Capital Ireland slowly invested that money into smaller size Irish businesses before closing out their second fund at €145 million in 2021. Across the two funds, they have invested in 23 businesses including electrical infrastructure manufacturer Kyte Powertech, Irish Homecare and medical devices company, Schivo Medical.
So far, they have realised 13 of those investments, 10 from Fund I, and 3 from Fund II, producing a return of €545 million.
Mr McGowan and Mr Quirke said MML Ireland had exited six of those investments in the past 12 months – including Natural World Products and Sonas bathrooms in 2025 – reaping €340 million in returns.
The firm says there is further value in the investments from their existing funds, pointing to their backing of Irish travel agent, Travel Department in 2018 just before the Covid pandemic hit.
“It was probably the biggest single investment we made in Fund 1 and clearly a global pandemic was not part of the business plan,” said Mr McGowan.
He explained that while revenue at the firm dropped by as much as 90 per cent, MML continued to work with its investees and have supported them to rebuild revenues at the company beyond its pre-pandemic heights.
“You would be as proud of that performance as anything,” Mr Quirke echoed, “For the business, for them to be back above where it was originally is huge.”
The founders say this demonstrates the value of their approach to investing, targeting companies firstly with a “really world class product or service” but looking to support management teams with “appetite and ambition to grow and scale their business”.
MML has already invested in Mail Metrics as part of this third fund and is aiming to continue its strategy of investing in smaller companies across Ireland and supporting their founders’ growth ambitions – the same goal they had when they founded 12 years ago.
