Everquip - Bright sparks in engineering

A Hull engineering firm is proving a bright spark with its thirst for exports.

“We don’t listen to the doom-and-gloom-mongers; we just go out and get it,” says John Branton, international business development manager for Everquip Garage Equipment Ltd.

The Hull-based company makes steel inspection pits and supplies and services garage equipment for a raft of blue-chip customers across the UK and Ireland. Its customers include Stagecoach, British Nuclear Fuels, BT, the Ministry of Defence and Volvo Truck and Bus.

Everquip’s go-out-and-get-it policy has made it a success story that appears to buck the regional and national trend as highlighted in November’s Survey of Regional Economic Trends carried out for Yorkshire Forward and the CBI. The survey found that companies in Yorkshire and Humber are less optimistic than they were six months ago, they have seen profit margins fall, their research and development spend is down and their marketing and management skills are in need of improvement. Businesses in Hull are among some of the most pessimistic in the region.

By contrast, Everquip, which is 25 years old this year, has enjoyed spectacular growth over the past two years as a result of more aggressive marketing, the success of its new inspection pit division and its first foray into Europe. In 2007 it expects to grow turnover in garage equipment by a further 25 per cent and increase profits in the inspection pit division by 50 per cent, based on further penetration of European markets.

A major catalyst for Everquip’s recent success was securing funding in 2004 from UK Trade & Investment (UKTI), which enabled it to take increased stand space at the Commercial Vehicle Show at the NEC in Birmingham. “As a result we saw a significant increase in orders, both at the show and afterwards,” says John.

UKTI works closely with Yorkshire Forward to help develop export opportunities for businesses in Yorkshire and Humber. Everquip accessed the funding of up to £3,000 through UKTI’s Passport to Export programme, which provides training, planning and ongoing support for new and inexperienced exporters.

Encouraged by its success at the Commercial Vehicle Show, Everquip then started to investigate European export opportunities, identifying the Netherlands as the most promising starting point.

“No one else was making inspection pits there, there was no language barrier, the high water table makes our pits, which are guaranteed against leaks for ten years, particularly suitable, and we already had some knowledge of the market through our sponsorship of the Everquip Rally Team in the Netherlands,” says John.

The first pit was installed in December 2006, but Everquip sees the Netherlands as a bridgehead for expansion into Belgium, France and Germany. Its marketing drive will be helped by a new £12,500 mobile exhibition unit, which allows it to demonstrate its inspection pit to prospective customers anywhere in the UK or Europe.

Everquip also plans to add a third stream to its business: domestic inspection pits for classic car enthusiasts. “Lots of car enthusiasts dig a hole and line it with cement, which raises many health and safety issues,” says John. “Our fibreglass pit is safe, clean and easy to maintain.”

With full order books and exciting export opportunities ahead, Everquip will move to a larger factory with 50 per cent more production capacity in the first quarter of 2007.

But the company also keeps its productivity up by its active healthy living and eating policy, which, says John, has significantly reduced absenteeism since it was introduced two years ago.

In 2005, concerned about high levels of sickness the previous year, when 280 absence days were clocked up by 18 members of staff, managers introduced a healthy living and eating policy, including free daily fruit rations which staff were encouraged to eat instead of the usual Mars bars and crisps. In the first year of the scheme sickness absence fell to just 80 days.

And Everquip’s 21 staff are also motivated by the company’s friendly and egalitarian culture. “Our managing director Stuart Everard is the lead singer in Shooter, recently voted Hull’s best cover band,” says John.

Clearly, for this Hull firm, engineering has never been so rock ’n’ roll.