04.01.2005

Hewden announces major changes

UK based Hewden Stuart, the largest rental company in Europe, owned by CAT dealer Finning International, has today announced a major organisational restructuring of its Tool Hire and Plant Hire businesses aimed at moving the group closer to its customers.

Hewden plans to combine the two businesses into a single entity with the intention to simplify contact, ordering, logistics and invoicing processes while providing customers with the convenience of dealing with one company for all of their tool and plant hire needs.

Hewden Plant Hire includes, Telehandlers, Excavators, Pumps, rollers, dumpers and the like, but not Cranes and Access. The statement from the company says that these divisions “will continue to operate as they do now”.

As part of the restructure, Brian Sherlock has been appointed to the newly created role of Director, Operations he will be responsible for driving the integration forward.

“In order to achieve our ambitious growth plans we identified the need to simplify the organisational structure with streamlined product offerings and one distribution channel to our customers. It makes sense to give our customers the convenience of dealing with a single entity, when they want to do so, and that is what the restructuring will achieve” said Sherlock.

“The new organisation will operate on a hub and spoke concept, with rental centres (hubs) providing a comprehensive set of products and services, supported by a number of local rental stores (spokes), outlets that provide product offerings and services used regularly by the local customer base. The objective is to ensure that we fully meet the needs of customers with multiple sites, whilst continuing to provide quality of service to those who deal with us on a local basis only,” he continued.

Hewden also announce that Mike Penn, currently Director, Construction Equipment at Finning UK - has been appointed to the role of Director, Sales & Marketing. his role will be to develop the national and regional sales and marketing organisation, moving Hewden closer to its customers.
Penn will also take overall responsibility for Hewden’s product portfolio, including sourcing strategy and asset disposal.