Scottish disposals complete Peterhead Consolidation

Peterhead Crane Company has completed its programme of disposals which sees it withdraw from the Scottish rental market and consolidate around four depots in England.

Depots in Dundee and Paisley are now owned by Baldwins, and the Inverkeithing depot has been sold to Ainscough.

The Peterhead and Aberdeen depots have been sold back to a company controlled by Roger Taylor, the man who originally sold the crane business to Peterhead Group in 1997. All sales include cranes.

Taylor’s company, Protaras, takes over about 45 cranes from Peterhead in a deal worth £12.6m ($20m), though net cash proceeds accruing to Peterhead come to just £2.6m ($4m) after liabilities such as leasing finance are discharged.

Peterhead chief executive Bill Baugh, who was brought in to reorganise the company after it had run into financial difficulties resulting in part from over-ambitious expansion in cranes, said that all loss-making business had now been disposed. “We are just about where we want to be,” he said.

Peterhead Crane Company now has main depots only in Newcastle and Immingham and satellite depots in Teesside and Immingham.

With the disposals, Peterhead’s fleet has been reduced from a peak of 162 mobile cranes to about 80, in the range of 25t to 160t.

Peterhead Group also owns Birchwood, a forklift truck rental company and Toyota dealer.