Wiggins bags £11m with site deal

DEBT-ridden Wiggins, owner of London Manston cargo airport in Kent and would-be racecourse developer, has sold most of its 69-acre Fairfield site in Bedfordshire to a housebuilding consortium.

The £16.7m sale of the 44-acre site to a new company owned by Wiggins and Galliford Try leaves Wiggins with £11m cash. It will repay £3m of mezzanine debt, most of its senior debt and use the rest as working capital.

Wiggins recently posted losses of £27.4m and said it would sell assets to concentrate on developing a network of airports in Europe. Last week the Government denied it permission to build a £100m racecourse on land it owns in East London. It is not clear if Wiggins will appeal against the decision or try to sell the site.

Wiggins and Galliford Try have injected £4.5m into Fairfield Redevelopments, with further backing coming from Royal Bank of Scotland. The Fairfield site is centred on a listed hospital building with 38 acres of grounds, which Wiggins has agreed to sell to another housebuilder.