Former JD Sports boss Peter Cowgill has invested £2.5m into Chillblast Group as he hailed the resuscitated PC gaming outfit’s “impressive first year”.
The retail bigwig has been appointed as non-executive chairman of the Warrington-based firm, which turned over £37.8m in the period to 31 March 2025.
Chillblast Group was formed amid a recapitalisation at consumer and B2B tech buy-and-build Tactus Group last March.
Chillblast was one of several quickfire purchases Tactus made in 2021 and 2022.
Tactus was forced to put another of its acquisitions, e-tailer Box Ltd, into administration in January 2024. It went under owing £23.2m to unsecured creditors, an administrator’s Statement of Proposals showed.
“An impressive first year”
Chillblast today announced it has secured a new £3m investor loan facility to “support working capital and accelerate its next phase of growth”, bringing its total investor backing to £10.5m (led by former Tactus backer Arete Capital Partners).
Cowgill has made a personal investment of £2.5m in the business, which claims to have a current revenue runrate of £50m.
As well as selling high-performance consumer gaming PCs, Chillblast supplies eSports teams and games developers and provides AI-enabled workstations to high technology businesses across the UK. It claims to employ over 100 people.
“Over the years, I’ve identified the characteristics needed for success in consumer businesses,” Cowgill said in a statement.
“Chillblast has demonstrated many of these traits – high-quality products, a strong leadership team, and a market that’s seeing surging demand. The business has achieved an impressive first year, and I’m looking forward to helping guide the next stage of its journey.”
“Next phase of growth”
Chillblast Group received a total investment of £7.5m in its first year, accounts show.
Among other things, this money was used to purchase trade and assets of the legacy companies, pay salary and redundancy costs for employees who left the business, fulfil the acquired customer order book and rebuild working capital.
During its first year, Chillblast Group said it experienced “headwinds typically associated with a start-up business in its first year of trading”.
These included a lack of available insured trade credit.
Box.co.uk was last April resurrected by Five Tech, another tech e-tailer that ranked 118th in IT Channel Oxygen’s recent Oxygen 250 2025.
Chillblast said it is planning a range of new product launches later this year, “capitalising on the recent Nvidia 50 series graphics cards launches and growing consumer appetite for custom-built high-performance machines”.
“We’ve built real momentum in our first year, with strong performance across both consumer and enterprise channels,” Chillblast CEO Scott Brenchley said in a statement.
“Securing this additional funding and welcoming Peter to the board sets us up for the next phase of growth.”
