CEO Steve Muggleton has previously told us that size and diversification was key to Bolton Clarke weathering the COVID-19 storm – now Chairman Pat McIntosh AM CSC has revealed further details of how the Not For Profit is using scale to drive its business forward.
Speaking at LASA’s Ten Days of Congress on the role of the board, Mr McIntosh said Bolton Clarke – already one of Australia’s largest Not For Profit aged care, home care and retirement living providers with 24 aged care homes, 25 retirement villages and over 130,000 home care clients – wants to double in size in the next five years under its strategic plan.
“Size does matter in a low margin sector such as ours,” he stated. “For example, it would be very difficult to sustain the corporate overheads required to build the clinical expertise needed to govern and manage seriously health-compromised clients without a significant revenue base.”
He added that in a low-margin business, the corporate overheads ratio can be reduced by growing the underlying businesses.
“Further, in an ageing society simply maintaining market share will necessitate growth,” he said.
This includes significantly growing their home care business as well as expanding their RACs and supported living into NSW and Victoria.
“We are doing this to maintain market share and maintain a position of influence in our sector.”
To that end, the Chairman said the organisation had exited 25 contracts in the past two years that were not aligned with or delivering a reasonable margin.
“Importantly, all of our growth is customer-informed with hard assets being built to meet future customer and market needs.”
You have to ask: how many other providers would be planning a similar growth strategy?
