Specialist focus: Plant hire: Garic keeps on growing

Nesting beside the M66 just outside Bury, Lancashire, is the all-new, purpose-built base for specialist plant hirer and manufacturing company Garic. Set on the site of a former bleach works, the new building houses 10 work bays fronted by two-storey offices. In a couple of years the building will be partially powered by electricity generated from waterwheels, one of which will be installed in the spot vacated by the waterwheel that once powered the bleach works.

According to general manager Paul Massey, consolidating Garic's existing three depots into the new 4ha site has allowed production to rise by 70%, and is the culmination of five years of planning. It is also the latest chapter in a story that began in 1983, when two brothers Gary and Lorne Entwistle and their father Eric started the business by rebuilding a dismantled JCB 3C backhoe and using it on sewer replacement contracts in the north Manchester area. As the work built up, the fleet of excavators and bowsers slowly increased and Garic could have become one of dozens, or even hundreds, of family-run plant hirers dotted up and down the country - but no.

In the late '80s, the excavator fleet was sold and Garic became a specialist hirer for the bowsers the brothers manufactured at the family farm. In 1989, a request for an environmentally secure fuel bowser from Birse Construction for a job at Connahs Quay Power Station in north Wales saw the production of Garic's first bunded bowser. "Garic very quickly became the first name in bowser and tanker rental," says Massey, who joined the company in 1995 as a fabrication engineer.

Innovation and inventiveness saw the company awarded two patents in the late 1990s. The first was for an Interceptor Drip Tray that retains fuel and oil but discharges water. This is still in production, and a recently signed deal will see Garic's products, including the drip tray, introduced into Speedy's range.

The second patent was for the Enviro-Wash, a wheel wash system based on an existing machine that had been redesigned to remove the inherent problems. "That's the sort of thing we are good at, spotting weaknesses in existing products and overcoming them," says Massey.

Production of the wheel wash "went through the roof" and radically altered the company's prospects. Today there are more than 200 Enviro-Wash units in Garic's 5,000-strong hire fleet, with sales to match.

Around the same time as the Enviro-Wash was introduced, the company started building its Combi-Cabin 'instant' welfare units. Its all-in-one design, with integral power supply, fresh and wastewater tanks, made it very attractive to construction companies and it remains the mainstay of the hire fleet with 700 units (and rising) on the books.

Managing director Lorne Entwistle says: "We are genuinely unique because we design, manufacture and maintain our own innovative products that help construction companies get on with their job, with the welfare and environmental compliance taken care of." He sums up the company's progress by saying: "We have progressed from being a hirer of products required on construction sites, to being one of the companies the Health & Safety Executive recommends to construction managers when they need a guarantee the equipment used will be health and safety compliant."

Production of equipment such as the accommodation units, bowsers and more lately the PowerSafe containerised generator units, now takes place in two bays of its 5,110m2 new facility. Around 25 fabricators cut and weld the basic steelwork to make new equipment, and a team of 15 are employed in a further three bays on the technical fit-out of the new equipment and refurbishing existing items in the fleet.

As equipment returns from hire, it is thoroughly cleaned, inspected and repaired, then immediately made ready for re-hire to achieve the highest utilisation. This is carried out in the new cleaning bay specially equipped with pressure-washing equipment and silt and oil interceptors. "Previously, we washed the equipment outside, but in the winter there were problems with water freezing in the pipes and trying to keep the operators warm. This solves both problems in one go and means the washing crew are not isolated outside and away from the rest of the staff," says Massey.

Green credentials

In the adjacent bay is a new spray booth that exhibits Garic's green credentials. It has a state-of-the-art filtration system to ensure zero emissions of paint pigment or vapour into the atmosphere. Furthermore, the heating system can be run on waste oil, used thinners and virtually any oil-based liquid.

Transporting 5,000 hire items around the UK is undertaken by Garic's own fleet of 40 trucks and various trailers. Add to that the van-mounted welfare units and there are more than 200 vehicles based at the new site. To cope with this fleet, there is a dedicated service bay complete with inspection pit.

More than 465m2 of parts storage for the company's products is housed in bay one, towards the front of the building, meaning delivery and collection vehicles do not interfere with the rest of the site.

Having faith in the products it produces is essential for any company and Garic is no exception. It utilises a number of its own products around the new building, starting with a couple of PowerSafe containerised generator units as stand-by power in case there is a mains failure. Several accommodation units inside the workshop house the canteen, others a changing room, a cleaners' store and the production office.

At SED, Garic showed its new range of 12V solar-powered cabins and PlantStore, a secure containerised storage unit - and took confirmed orders for £750,000-worth of equipment. Production of the latest items had been delayed because of the constraints of the old depots, but is now underway at a rate of five welfare units per week into the hire fleet, plus sales on top.

Secure units

"We have pre-production units of the PlantStore out with customers," says Massey, for appraisal and evaluation with an amazing 100% satisfaction and approval for its concept and its unique security features. The secure units are designed to stop thieves, vandals and arsonists intent on stealing or otherwise damaging plant items up the size of a 13t tracked excavator or a 20t ADT. It has a maximum height approaching 4m and weighs about 8t but does not have a floor, so would-be thieves cannot simply jack the container onto a trailer and make off with the contents. In addition, a special trailer is required to transport PlantStore units. "They sit on special outriggers that extend from the side of the trailer," explains Massey. "We have now added five of these new trailers to our transport fleet in readiness."

Lifting PlantStore units is done using low-level and removable lifting eyes in order to foil thieves. This key feature caught the eye of SED visitor Frank Lambert, a Health & Safety Executive inspector, who commended the company on the location of the eyes as it avoided the need to climb onto the roof to attach and remove the lifting chains. "We have done it for that exact reason, if you consider that accommodation units can be stacked two high, that's quite a height to climb," says Massey, adding: "So we are now putting low-level lifting eyes on all our new units and furthermore retro-fitting the existing hire fleet."

This ability to invent, improvise and adapt has served Garic well. As Massey puts it: "We combine technologies and make them more user-friendly."

The latest solar-powered cabins are a good example. These run LED lighting, water heating and other services from a 12V battery pack that is recharged by a large solar panel on the roof (also used for lighting in the PlantStore). In the accommodation unit is a small generator that automatically kicks in if the battery charge falls below a pre-determined level, although tests indicate it will need to run for only a few hours over the entire winter period.

Garic sells its products directly in mainland UK, but Massey says the firm prefers to send units out on hire. "Even if that means compromising the rate for, say, a five-year hire so it is attractive to the customer. That way we get the unit back at the end of the hire period, can refurbish it to as-new condition and put it back in the fleet." That said, it has recently appointed a sales agent in Ireland, which has already attracted £250,000- worth of business.

Product development

Although Garic has grown to become a £10m turnover company, its ethos of developing new products remains strong as is evident in the new building, where two whole bays are dedicated to prototype development. While the door to bay eight and nine remained tightly shut during our visit, Massey is promising that new products will go into production later in the year. He is also predicting further growth. "Currently we have 102 employees, but this will be 125 by the end of the year," he says.

Talks are also underway with a mainstream European plant distributor keen to distribute Garic's products in mainland Europe. As many of the items Garic manufactures are low value for their physical size, transport costs to continental Europe would be prohibitive so production there is a distinct possibility. Perhaps that's the next chapter in the Garic story - we won't have to wait long to find out.