Andrews Sykes is now the UK’s leading specialist hire company with over 30 depots and hire centres across the UK and operations in Europe and The Middle East.
The history of the company show over 150 years experience in delivering advanced pumping and ground water control systems, over 60 years experience in specialist construction services and more than 40 years experience in the hire, sale, installation and maintenance of all types of comfort cooling, air conditioning, heating, temperature control and ventilation systems, for hire or sale.
Earlier this year, in his Chairman’s Statement, J G Murray reported increased profits up from £12.9 million in 2009 to £13.9 million in 2010. The main hire and sales business in the UK and Northern Europe (the Netherlands and Belgium) returned a strong performance in the year.
The hire business, across all of the company’s divisions is the responsibility of David Himsworth, UK Operations Director. He says, “We have a network of depots across England Wales and Scotland which we believe gives us a high level of coverage nationwide. Despite the current downturn across many business sectors, we have not seen any reduction in either the service that we offer or the number of depots that we operate. One of the great strengths of our company is the quality of the people that we employ and, in the last 12 months, we have invested heavily in training, particularly for those in customer-facing positions, namely the field sales management, the depot managers and the hire managers.”
The modern company was created by the coming together of the Andrews Heat for Hire business with Sykes Pumps to form Andrews Sykes Ltd. Today there are more than 30 depots and hire centres with over 500 staff serving virtually all industry sectors: from small businesses to multi-site operations and international corporations… including building and construction companies, industry, retail, banking and finance, leisure and hospitality, facilities management, manufacturing, utilities, oil and chemicals, government, healthcare, the armed forces and emergency services.
David explains, “The customer facing aspect of each depot operates independently but, from an operational point of view, we have divided the country into three zones – North, Central and South, each with its own regional director. The sales function is a separate part of the company. Andrews Sykes has its headquarters and administration in Wolverhampton.”
David concludes, “Our major strengths are our nationwide network of depots, the size of our hire fleet and the people in the business. We have a strong focus on customer service and we have also instigated a preventative maintenance programme on our long-term hire equipment. Last year we also introduced a 24/7 service o, that, in the event of a problem, the customer can contact a call centre that will feed the information into the system, right up through the company as far as myself if necessary. This service we believe is probably the best in the industry.”
