Profits fall at Ainscough Crane Hire
WIGAN-based Ainscough Crane Hire saw earnings slip last year due to tough trading conditions.
Newly-filed accounts for the year to May show pre-tax profits fell 37% from £11m to £6.9m, on sales of £96m, down 1%.
The group has around 1,000 staff across 28 depots and 456 mobile and heavy lift cranes ranging in capacity from 10 to 1,000 tonnes.
In their report the directors said: “Trading conditions in 2012 have continued to be very challenging… During the year the group has continued to respond to market conditions, reducing the lower tonnage crane fleet and streamlining operating costs.
“The directors manage the group using a number of key performance indicators of which the most significant are the physical and financial utilisation of the crane fleet.
“At the same time, the group has invested a further £9.4m in new cranes to ensure it can offer customers the best fleet in the UK as and when market conditions improve.”
In December Ainscough’s parent Bradley Hall Holdings was acquired by Goldman Sachs and an arm of private equity firm TPG in a major institutional deal.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but a new £105m financing deal was also announced. Ainscough was sold by the Ainscough family to the now defunct Bank of Scotland Integrated Finance for £255m in 2007. The vendor in the Goldman Sachs deal was Caird Capital, a joint venture between Lloyds Bank and Coller Capital.
