How one company built £14m business by buying up flagging B2B titles
Datateam homepage on 13 April 2026 A Kent-based communications business has grown to over £14m in turnover by acquiring more than 70 underperforming specialist magazines. Many of its print titles, such as Process and Control Engineering and School Building, are incredibly niche. Datateam has spent twenty years buying up small to medium-sized specialist titles, expanding them through events and newsletters while reducing their print costs where possible. Most of the mainly monthy titles Datateam has acquired have been at risk of slipping out of profitability. “We’d like to consider ourselves to be one of the largest independently-owned publishing media businesses in the UK,” Datateam media director Paul Ryder said, having managed to turn “a lot of these acquisitions” into “profitable magazines”. This revenue is made through print and online advertising across newsletters and websites (sponsored takeovers, banners and button ads), as well as through paid subscriptions, which, for a free magazine, “guarantees that you can receive a printed copy”. “Our goal would be that anyone who wanted a printed copy, we’ll send it to them, …
