Who Owns Toolstation?

Toolstation is owned by Travis Perkins, the London-listed builders’ merchant group. Companies House records Travis Perkins Group Holdings Limited as controlling Toolstation Holdings Limited since 17 March 2020 — replacing Travis Perkins Plc on the same day, an internal reorganisation rather than a sale. The holding company carries a striking company number: 00572428, incorporated 4 October 1956, decades before Toolstation existed. Ownership verified 6 September 2026.

Who owns Toolstation today?

The trading company is TOOLSTATION LIMITED (04372131), incorporated 12 February 2002 and registered in Northampton.

Above it, TOOLSTATION HOLDINGS LIMITED (00572428) is controlled by Travis Perkins Group Holdings Limited at 75% or more of shares and votes with the right to appoint and remove directors, notified 17 March 2020. The ceased entry is Travis Perkins Plc, which held the same position until that date.

One group company replacing another on a single day is the signature of an internal reorganisation, not a change of owner — the same pattern this site records at Screwfix, where Kingfisher moved its holding on 23 July 2021. Travis Perkins has owned Toolstation throughout.

Ultimate parent and corporate structure

Travis Perkins plc is the ultimate parent, listed on the London Stock Exchange. As a listed company it is exempt from the PSC regime, so Companies House holds no ownership record for it — the register names the intermediate holding company and stops.

The holding company’s number is worth pausing on. 00572428 was incorporated on 4 October 1956 — forty-six years before Toolstation was founded. An old, long-dormant company has been renamed and repurposed as the group’s holding vehicle for a modern business.

That is entirely legitimate and quietly common: incorporating a new company is trivial, but an existing one may carry tax history, contracts or simply administrative convenience. It also means a company’s incorporation date is not the business’s founding date, and reading it as one produces nonsense — as it would here, where the number implies a 1950s tool retailer that never existed.

Major shareholders or controlling persons

No individual controls Toolstation or Travis Perkins. Travis Perkins plc’s shares are widely held by institutions and private investors, with the largest positions sitting with index managers on behalf of the investors in their funds.

No holder approaches the 25% at which UK rules record significant control, and none appears on Companies House, because listed companies do not file PSC registers.

Official records and evidence

Both company numbers, the 2002 and 1956 incorporations, and both PSC entries with their 17 March 2020 date are Companies House records and can be checked directly.

What the register does not establish is Travis Perkins plc itself. It names Travis Perkins Group Holdings Limited and goes no further, so the connection to the listed parent rests on the group’s own reporting rather than on a filing.

Travis Perkins plc’s shareholders are disclosed through major holdings notifications to the London Stock Exchange and the annual report, and every percentage is a snapshot from a filing date. Companies House does not verify most filed information.

Ownership history and changes

Toolstation was founded in 2003 in Bridgwater, Somerset, by Mark Goddard-Watts and members of the Perkins family — as a catalogue and telephone business selling tools to trade customers, with no shops.

• 2002 — Toolstation Limited incorporated.
• 2003 — trading begins as a catalogue operation.
• 2012 — Travis Perkins buys a 30% stake.
• 2015 — Travis Perkins acquires the remainder, taking full ownership.
• 17 March 2020 — the holding company changes within the group.

The founding story is almost identical to Screwfix‘s, covered elsewhere on this site: a West Country catalogue business selling tools by post, bought by a larger group, with the branch network built afterwards by the new owner. Screwfix started in Yeovil and was bought by Kingfisher in 1999; Toolstation started in Bridgwater, thirty miles away, and was bought by Travis Perkins.

Two of Britain’s largest trade counter chains were founded within a few years and a few miles of each other, and both were acquired rather than grown independently.

Related companies and brands

Travis Perkins owns Travis Perkins, Toolstation, Keyline, BSS, CCF and Benchmarx.

Wickes is no longer in the group: it was demerged in 2021 and is now a separately listed company. A shopper who assumes Wickes and Travis Perkins are connected is describing a relationship that ended five years ago.

Toolstation’s principal competitor, Screwfix, belongs to Kingfisher, which also owns B&Q. So the trade counter market is essentially a contest between two listed groups — and behind each sits a DIY chain most customers would not connect to it.