Dr Matt Redgewell had an agreement to purchase his first veterinary practice within his first week on the job. ‘On my first week working with Dr Marilyn Price of Seville Veterinary Clinic in the Yarra Valley, she said, “One day I'd like to sell the practice to you”. And that stuck with me,’ he says.
The two doctors set up a nice, well-planned transition over a number of years, with Dr Redgewell taking full ownership of the clinic in February 2023.
Just weeks before the dust had even settled on the takeover, he was approached by another vet whose practice was just up the road. No time for a transitional plan, negotiations began quickly. ‘We managed to strike a deal where I would buy the second practice about two or three weeks later. So, a week after I’d got finance to buy one big clinic, I had to ring BOQ Specialist back and say, “Hey, I'm going to buy another one".
Suddenly, Dr Redgewell faced issues of funding, restraint clauses, company structures, and legal entities. But in many ways, the purchase of both clinics was a natural progression for a vet whose plan since childhood was to work with animals in this pocket of the world he’s always called home.
A plan years in the making
Growing up on a small beef cattle farm, Dr Redgewell caught a love of working with animals from an early age. ‘The local vet used to come out, and I really admired the job to the point where I arranged some work experience. Then I spent a lot of my school holidays at one of the local vets.’
After graduating with his veterinary science degree from James Cook University in 2013, he returned to the Yarra Valley to work with Dr Price at Seville Veterinary Clinic with his wife Andrea, originally from Sweden, who he met at vet school. ‘[My wife] worked at another practice in the Yarra Valley for a while. Then we both moved overseas and worked in the UK and Sweden.’
One of the great advantages of doing a stint in Sweden is the high uptake of pet insurance, which has flow-on benefits for both vets and pets. ‘It really took that money discussion off the table, which is good. But also, as vets, it gives us a chance to do a lot more. So, we gained a lot of experience.’
But the plan was always to return to the Yarra Valley and take over Dr Price’s practice. ‘Our first goal at vet school was to become good all-round vets,’ says Dr Redgewell. ‘The second goal was to have our own practice so we could regularly return to Sweden. It's important for us to get back there every year so our kids get the culture – being our own boss affords us that ability.’
In fact, everything he did from the moment he left for the UK was in preparation for taking over the practice. ‘I actually did a one-year certificate with the University of Liverpool in veterinary business management, which prepared me to take on my own practice and hit the ground running. That was very influential, and it helped to give me the confidence to provide the right documents for the bank and have a business model and a vision of where we want to go with everything.’
Doubling down on the Yarra Valley
Fast forward to January 2023, and Drs Matt and Andrea Redgewell were finalising the deal for the final transition to ownership when Matt got a call from Dr Don Finlay at the nearby Upper Yarra Veterinary Clinic. After 30 years, he was retiring too – and wanted to know if the couple would be interested in purchasing his practice.
While they hadn’t planned to take on a second clinic so quickly, they saw it as a chance to expand their service and cover more of the Yarra Valley. ‘A vast majority of our clients are already in that area, and so a competitor going in there would probably mean they would be closer to those clients, and we might lose some business,’ Dr Redgewell says.
Financing an ambitious expansion
Dr Redgewell says BOQ Specialist made the transition and process very easy. ‘Luke James and the team at BOQ Specialist were amazingly supportive. It was a testament to the bank, especially that they allowed us to borrow more when we had just bought one clinic,’ he says.
‘We’ve been running both clinics for about nine months now, and we've been very, very fortunate and it's going very well for us.’
With 8 veterinarians working across two sites, the couple are now looking to the future, which may involve using their self-managed super funds to purchase the premises of one or both practices. ‘That's our next plan,’ says Redgewell. ‘I didn't want to overreach by buying the two businesses and then buying the premises at the same time. And that's allowed us good cash flow and to get ourselves stable, because it's all been new for us.’
That cautious approach proved successful. Since the interview, the couple have gone on to purchase their practice property through their self-managed super fund (SMSF), while also securing finance for their new family home.
A platform for future growth
BOQ Specialist’s Luke James first met Dr Redgewell in 2021 when he purchased 50% of the Seville Veterinary Clinic. ‘The plan was that in a little while longer, we were going to help him buy into the remaining 50 per cent, so he'd be the 100 per cent owner,’ he says. When plans changed and the opportunity to purchase the second clinic arose, Luke agreed the decision made sense, and they were able to come up with a structure that everyone was happy with.
‘Not only did we fund the remaining 50 per cent of the practice; we also funded the second practice down the road.
‘The current practice was doing really well, and the second practice had some real scope for improvement. It was just one of those things where we looked at all parts of it, and the purchase made sense from our perspective as well.’
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