23.11.2018
Ainscough rebalances
UK rental company Ainscough Crane Hire has announced further layoffs and depot closures as it addresses a slowdown in business volumes.
The closures include its depots in the Wirral - with coverage of the area shifting to Preston and Manchester depots and Newcastle with coverage now shifting to Stockton. At the same time Coventry and Dundee depots will be reduced to two and three crane satellites respectively. Finally, it is also reducing headcount in some of its administration areas. It is understood that some relocations are being discussed.
In an update to employees, chief executive Janet Entwistle said that current economic uncertainty is affecting the company’s customers which in turn is having an impact on demand for its services. She confirmed that volumes this year are running around 15 percent lower than last year. This in turn has pushed costs up to 94 percent of sales compared to 80 percent three years ago, highlighting the need to further reduce costs.
The company has also released an official statement which says:
"We regularly review our fleet capacity and depot structure to ensure we can meet the current and future requirement of our customers. As part of our regular reviews we have recently made a small number of changes to our business, which includes closing two of our smaller depots, where we can meet our customer needs from other nearby depots. This does not affect our ability to deliver a truly national service from our 30 locations across the UK."
Vertikal Comment
As the country’s largest and possibly only truly national crane hire company, Ainscough faces the challenge of competing with well run local or regional rental companies for local work. Given the inevitable corporate nature of such large businesses a well run locally owned company will always outperform a national corporation for this type of business. Where companies like Ainscough can score is with major national contractors, which want a single supplier along with heavy lifting and major projects where its resources and scale are major advantages.
Even after the cutbacks 30 locations in the UK is still very extensive coverage, in fact some would say that this is still excessive, although worsening traffic congestion around the country does obligate more closer locations in order to offer a truly national coverage. Announcing such changes at this time of year will never be appreciated, one has to wonder why it is being done now, rather than earlier in year or after Christmas?
While changes such as this are inevitable from time to time in any company, it does have a negative effect on overall morale and give succour to competitors. It is nothing new, over the past 40 years the UK crane rental industry has seen at least two waves of ‘consolidation’ with one big company rising above all others and then gradually fading as locally owned competition gains ground and nibbles away at the big players local operations. Ainscough has the challenge of fighting with the local crane companies and big global players such as Sarens, Mammoet and ALE for the big projects, not the easiest place to be.
whothistime
how can a depot such as wirral go from realy busy to closed in such a short time , didnt know newcastle depot . When previous manager was there it was a busy depot new manager didnt have a clue. Seems typical as I see it across Ainscough . Where was his area director? Sad times. Thoughts must go to the men & families to be out of work at Chritsmas , seems spitefull to me .
Pemby
Thing with competing against Sarens, Mammoet and ALE is that those companies have such a wide range of equipment, in addition to all three having systems like the SGC(sarens), PTC (mammoet) and AL.SK (ALE) systems for the big projects like petrochemical and so on, as well as large fleet of cranes from little 40tonners or less, up through to 750s or bigger. ALE's website indicates they have an LG 1750, below than a 400t, no idea if they have more than one, as well as having a fleet of crawlers. Sarens and Mammoet both have extensive fleets of mobiles, up to 1200 tonners.
Outside of those, they have to compete with Baldwins, who have an LG1750 and LTM 1800, with that first one having a massive range of configurations perfect for the largest of wind farm turbines, haven't looked at the 800's duty charts, though I imagine its similar. Then there's both having 500ts for the smaller windfarm jobs, not to mention heavy lifting etc.
Then theres the jobs that a main group probably wont take, where small firms would.
On the "depots closer" thing, I don't think much can be said since some firms will travel the crane if it happens to be cheaper than forking out for a crosshire to local firms. That's happened a few times for jobs I did slinging on in West Bromwich with a Spierings SK-477, even though it was a 4-hour-each-way-plus-8-actually-on-site job. paying three lads essentially what is essentially 21 hours of single-rate pay, plus fuel/whatever, sometimes is cheaper than a local crosshire, since you still need to send a lad, unless you essentially pay for a crane hire and slinger and supervisor, at which point you may as well just get contract lift from them, save yourself your own site visit to plan, in which case, you've lost the job for future visits.
All that, and I'm not surprised companies like Hewdens eventually get too big. All they need is a large rash of clients that don't pay (I honestly don't get the 'do the job then pay' when consumers in other fields basically pay first and then turns out have no leg to stand on when the work doesn't get done... you'd think that if the pay doesn't happen a company can't go in to undo their work... so many houses would be missing their roofs!)
Lifting
This is Janet getting her own back over the wage negotiations. Get rid of the people who go out and do the work. The tree is getting way to heavy at the top and if its not chopped soon the tree going to topple over. Think on oaktree.