by business editor Trevor Sturgess

tsturgess@thekmgroup.co.uk

Award-winning mine clearance firm BACTEC International has been taken over by an investment firm.

The fast-growing international specialist in explosive ordnance disposal (EOD), based at Medway City Estate, Rochester, is now owned by Perusa Partners Fund.

BACTEC celebrated its 20th anniversary on board HMS Belfast earlier this year, with guest speakers Ann Widdecombe, formerly MP for Maidstone and the Weald, and Lord Digby Jones, ex-CBI director-general and trade minister.

It was founded by former Royal Engineer Major Guy Lucas and his wife Joanna in 1991, and has become one of the world's leading EOD businesses.

It operates in 45 countries, including Iraq, and has offices in Australia and elsewhere. Last year, it cleared mines from the Falkland Islands. The company employs more than 1,000 people worldwide and around 50 in Medway.

Major Lucas said: "We are delighted about this promising new path BACTEC is about to take within Perusa's areas clearance group of companies."

Major and Mrs Lucas, and managing director Kevin Kneebone, will continue to steer the company under the new ownership.