18.04.2006

AFI take over Alan Drew

AFI the rapidly growing aerial lift business led by David Shipman, has acquired Watford based regional access company, Alan Drew.

Established in 1974, Alan Drew operates a fleet of 150 booms and scissors from Watford, Milton Keynes, Woolwich and Loughborough.

The company also includes other equipment in its range, including a sizeable inventory of alloy scaffold towers. Drew is a Svelt scaffold dealer in for part of the UK See Story No information on what AFI plans to do with this business has been released yet.

Alan Drew is owned by nine shareholders, including Alan Drew himself, but Ted Williams, the managing director, owns a controlling interest, with over 70 percent of the shares.

The 150 Alan Drew machines will be integrated into AFI’s rental fleet, which now numbers some 2,400 units and is budgeted to grow to over 2,700 units, as part of a £10 million expansion programme being undertaken this year.


AFI revenues were in the region of £16 million last year and it expects to exceed £20 million this year. Alan Drew will probably represent a couple of million of that, although no financial details of the deal have been released.

AFI locations include Birmingham, East Midlands, Hull, Liverpool, London East, London South, London West, Manchester, North East, Peterborough, South Wales, Southampton and Wakefield, with further depots due to open in the coming months.

AFI corporate development director Nick Selley said “This is our first significant acquisition and it is a tangible demonstration of our confidence in the future of both AFI as a successful business and the UK powered access rental sector as a whole.”

“The acquisition fits in very well with our strategy of developing a national network of depots and it gives us a strong customer base in the Northern Home counties. We are particularly pleased that the acquisition will give us a well established depot in Milton Keynes – this is in a region which offers AFI tremendous potential for further growth,” he added.