IAWS Co-op has bought a €70 million-plus stake in utility National Toll Roads (NTR)

The co-op, which owns 10 per cent of IAWS Group, but is a separate entity to it, announced last night that it had bought 3.979 million NTR shares.

Neither party would reveal the price paid for the 16.6 per cent stake in the company. The shares have recently been trading at between €18 and €18.50 on the grey market.

The Irish Times understands that the purchase was made within that range. This means that the co-op spent between €71.6 million and €73.6 million on the investment.

NTR's shares are traded in public but it is not listed on any stock exchange. Activity in its shares increased last autumn when stockbrokers NCB and Goodbody began selling its stock.

Up to that point, only Davy Stockbrokers had been trading NTR equities.

In November businessman Mr John Gallagher sold 850,000 shares for €15 million, reducing his holding from 7.7 per cent to 4.1 per cent.

An IAWS Co-op statement said yesterday that the share purchase was a further development of a strategy it introduced last year of investing in companies likely to deliver value to shareholders.

"The co-op believes NTR plc to be a well-run company which is well placed for future growth," the statement said.

A number of the co-op's more recent investments have not turned out well.

It was one of the backers of Jetmagic, the Cork-based start-up airline that was grounded close to a year ago, leaving passengers stranded in Spain.

The company had estimated losses of €3.5 million. Its investors, who also included former Aer Lingus chief executive Mr Michael Foley and a number of local business people, lost €11 million.

It also had a stake in Axia, a company which last year made an unsuccessful bid for the contract to run the Government's metropolitan broadband network.

While the IAWS Co-op, or the Irish Agricultural Wholesale Society, ultimately led to the establishment of IAWS Group, the pair have no relationship outside the former's stake in the latter.

NTR operates a number of toll roads and owns waste management and environmental services company Greenstar. It bought this from Mr Gallagher in 2001 for €47 million.

Along with Spanish engineering group Dragados and Ascon, it has formed the Celtic Roads Group, which is bidding for a number of motorway and road building public private partnership (PPP) projects around the State.

Recently the consortium made a bid for the contract to upgrade a section of the M50 motorway around Dublin.