Ainscough Group completed the takeover in December of the wheeled mobile crane hire operations of Initial GWS, the UK’s largest mobile crane fleet.

Then, with the help of Liebherr, it swiftly moved more than 100 surplus cranes out of the UK.

Initial GWS was put up for sale by the conglomerate Rentokil Initial in August 1999 as part of a mass disposal of non-core businesses. The crawler crane business of GWS was sold to Weldex earlier last year and the Initial PTP aerial work platforms business to Loxam of France.

The price that Ainscough paid for the mobile crane operation is believed to be in the region of £20m to £25m ($30m-$37m).

The acquisition brought to Ainscough approximately 350 additional mobile cranes, taking its fleet to 600 cranes, about 100 more than the company needed, judged chairman Martin Ainscough. “It is our intention to operate approximately 500 cranes to ensure our clients receive the most modern and reliable equipment available,” Martin Ainscough said at the time of the takeover.

Within weeks Liebherr negotiated a deal to take more than 100 of the older cranes as a single package from Ainscough in exchange for the purchase of 23 new Liebherr all-terrains (ATs). The old cranes were shipped out of the UK by Liebherr and are to be sold at auction in the Netherlands by Ritchie Brothers. Provisional date of the auction is 21 to 23 March. The sale includes 48 all-terrains and 55 hydraulic truck cranes.

The 23 new Liebherr ATs that Ainscough is taking range in capacities from 40t to 120t. All are scheduled for delivery by the end of March. The Ainscough order includes three of the new Liebherr 100 tonners, the LTM 1100/2, bringing sales of this five-axle model in the UK to 20 units by early January.

According to Ainscough, merging the companies has been relatively painless, with no depot closures, and redundancies mostly confined to administrative staff at GWS’s Stockton head office which was closed down last month. Employee numbers at Ainscough have swelled from about 600 to more than 1,000 by the acquisition. One person who has kept his job is Initial GWS managing director Andrew Makepeace, who is now managing director of Ainscough Group. The GWS name is also being dropped later this year.

Baldwins Industrial Services chairman Richard Baldwin confirmed that he made a bid for GWS but it was rejected.