Lavendon buys The Platform Company for £46m

Powered access equipment provider Lavendon Group is to buy The Platform Company for £46m and has more than doubled pre-tax profit to £21.4m.

The acquisition of The Platform Company sees another 4,000 machines joining the Lavendon Group fleet, pushing the UK total to over 15,000, and adds a further 10 depots.

"Many of these depots are a close fit with our existing business and there is scope for synergy savings of around £2m," said Lavendon's chief executive Kevin Appleton. He said 235 employees will transfer across from Platform and some of its older machines may be moved to Lavendon's Middle East companies.

Turnover across the group, which has operations in the UK, Spain, France, Germany, Belgium and the Middle East, was up by almost a half at £186m, with acquisitions accounting for two-thirds of the increase. "For the first time all our operations are making a profit," said Appleton, highlighting the German operations, where Zooom and Gardemann have been merged and a £1.9m loss turned into a profit of £5.2m.

The UK accounted for almost £106m of the turnover and made an operating profit of over £17m. Appleton said additional capacity in the UK market means rental rates have remained flat despite some increase in machinery prices.

Once the acquisition of The Platform Company is completed, Appleton expects Lavendon to take around 17% of the UK access market (up from 12% currently). While he does not expect industry growth to be as fast as was the case following the introduction of Work at Height Regulations, Appleton said the UK still lags behind the USA and Europe in the use of access equipment and so expects growth to outstrip GDP for some time.