19.02.2020
Whyte Crane Hire in administration
Scottish crane rental company Whyte Crane Hire has appointed an administrator.
While talk has been circulating regarding the financial status of the business over the past week or so, we can now confirm that Blair Nimmo and Alastair McAlinden of KPMG have been appointed as joint administrators of the company, which operated from locations in Aberdeen and Grangemouth. It reported revenues of £10.7 million for the year ending June 2018, with a pre-tax profit of £308,000 and assets of more than £38 million with liabilities of £34.1 million. It was registered in 2001 and was wholly owned by Whyte Cranes Holding.
Please register to see all images
A new 450 tonne crane from the Whyte Crane Hire fleet
The administration does not affect sister company Whyte Crane Services which is also operated by the Whyte family, having been incorporated last July with some of the same directors.
11 employees of Whyte Crane Hire have been laid off. A statement indicates that directors and the family injected personal funds into the business in order to keep it running, before finally deciding that it was insolvent.
Blair Nimmo head of restructuring at KPMG UK said: “Despite the extensive efforts of the Whyte family, Whyte Crane Hire Limited was unable to continue trading in light of significant liabilities and cashflow difficulties, having been affected by the challenging market conditions in the Scottish construction and oil and gas sectors.”
"This has led to the redundancies which have been announced. We will be working closely with Skills Development Scotland via their PACE team to support all affected employees during this difficult time.”
This morning we formally asked the company owners for a comment but have so far not received a response. We will of course update if and when we received more information.
BlocktaeBlock
It is business as usual for Whyte Crane Services.Their cranes are still running with the old name on them.Spare a thought for the firms that are owed money by the old company.Firms should not be allowed to do this,fold one week and start again the next week.
Roondndoon
Maybe that’s what is needed, a clear out. Certain companies have gotten far too big & the market is saturated with cranes of all sizes. It’s just like a supermarket, go in & pick what u want!
That hasn’t helped the rates one little bit for the crane company or the operators. Also ‘back in the day’ it wasn’t so easy to buy a crane, supply, finance and regulatory restrictions weren’t as easy to get as today. Just sign here sir, u won’t need to pay for 12 months, then a beaming new 500t crane rolls up a month later! A crane costing in excess of £3m & ur clients basically want for nothing, the figures don’t add up & never will until something gives. If it takes a few more crane companies to disappear and smaller, smarter ones emerge charging decent rates for expensive kit & paying top class operators to give a great service I’m all for that!
BoydG
Whilst it is accepted that this is indeed sad news for employees and their families. I predict that this is only the first uk crane company to go to the wall so far.....watch this space as 3 more to follow suit, anyone care to spectulate who? Lots of red, blue & white, green cranes up for grabs in 2020.......