Three divisions of the troubled machinery firm the Hewden Group have been sold today to Ashtead Plant Hire Company – the access and power generation assets, the onsite plant business and the business and assets of Interlift Ltd. A total of 133 employees will transfer across with the businesses.
Sam Woodward of EY’s restructuring team, appointed joint administrators of the group – Hewden Stuart Ltd, Hewden Properties Ltd, Interlift Ltd and The Rigging House Ltd) commented:
“Management has been attempting to operationally reshape the business to focus on higher margin and quicker returning assets and services. However, this has proven challenging with the group’s capital structure and the recent trading environment.
“Management recently undertook a number of initiatives including approaching new funders and potential acquirers to recapitalise the business, but unfortunately these efforts proved unsuccessful.”
Woodward continued: “We are assessing the optimum strategy for maximising value in the remainder of the Group. In the meantime, we will continue to work with stakeholders to maintain service levels to customers who have assets on hire.”
On appointment of the administrators (22 November), a total of 251 employees were made redundant across the company’s depot and onsite locations. Employees affected by redundancy are being offered appropriate advice and support in making claims from the Redundancy Payments Office for outstanding wages, as well as redundancy and notice pay.
Woodward concluded: “It is with regret that 251 people have been made redundant. Our specialist team will work with those affected to help them claim outstanding wages and other payments due from the Redundancy Payments Office.”
Hewden’s most recent accounts, covering the 12-month period to December 31 2014, show that the company made a pretax loss of £16.6m on sales of £105.9m. It notched up exceptional costs of £2.2m, attributed to “severance, depot closure costs and other restructuring”, and forked out £8.9m in interest payments during the year.
The company is one of the UK’s biggest heavy machinery rental firms.
It said last month that it had been affected by declining trading conditions in the industry and had been “impacted by market uncertainty following the vote to leave the EU”.
The Manchester-based company rents out machinery such as cranes and excavators. It said that “the vote [to leave the European Union] has adversely affected a number of large construction and capital investment projects”.
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What a shame to see a long established company like Hewden going under, credit to A Plant for rescuing the great majority of the company, these things always happens just before Christmas.