Major UK contractors Tarmac and Bovis have agreed to merge their plant-hire businesses, Castle Plant Services and Wyseplant.

The companies said that the new venture offered benefits including a stronger market position, a larger trading base, a broader product range and improved operating efficiencies.

Though the new company will be one of the UK’s biggest plant-hire companies, with assets of £56m ($90m), neither Wyseplant nor Castle Plant has been a significant player in the crane business, though Wyseplant does own a number of tower cranes. However, the new company, to be called Castlewyse Ltd, is well placed to expand into new plant services should it choose, having a national network of 30 depots and a £60m ($96m) turnover in year one.

Both companies have moved away from direct contracting over the past 10 years or more, to project and construction management. The trend in Britain has been for the major contractors to divest themselves of their plant interests and buy in services from outside.

However in the depressed UK construction market of the early 1990s, it was not easy to sell for the desired price. Speculation now naturally arises that Castlewyse, a 50-50 joint venture between the two competitors, will be sold on once it has become established, or perhaps floated on the stock market.

However, there is growing anecdotal evidence that, with a construction industry upturn, UK contractors are starting once again to buy civil engineering plant and machinery. Sales of crawler cranes in the UK are currently running at double the level of last year, and most are to contractors.

Just last month Amec Services took delivery of two new IHI hydraulic crawlers to use on a tunnelling project in Workington in Cumbria. Previously, IHI’s UK dealer, AGD Equipment, might have expected to rent out the machines rather than sell them.

The greatest boost to the UK civil engineering industry, however, as expressed by Initial GWS managing director Andrew Makepeace in an interview with Cranes Today (see pp70-71), would be for the privately-financed $9bn Channel Tunnel Rail Link project to start. Preferred contractors have been identified but an 11th hour funding crisis has arisen. The consortium with the concession to develop the high speed line from London to the Channel Tunnel has failed to raise enough money. The UK government may have to re-tender the project or even scrap it. Either way, further delay seems certain.