06.08.2009

GBK enters administration

GBK the Glasgow, Scotland, based crane rental company has appointed an administrator. The appointment via the Royal Bank of Scotland -its major shareholder, has been kept relatively quiet and as of today the notice has not yet been posted in the Edinburgh Gazette.

We have seen a copy of a letter to a creditor and been notified of a formal notice by another creditor. Calls to the company’s locations went unanswered this afternoon. When we do hear from the company we will update this article.

When founded from the ashes of the JD Crane Group in 2004 with almost 100 cranes. 12 months ago the company reported a fleet of 33 mobile cranes to the Cranes&Access Top 30 UK/Ireland rental fleets. We understand that this is now down to around 10 units. See GBK buys JD Crane Group

Vertikal Comment

GBK was built on the foundation of JD Crane Hire which emerged from the mess created by Roger Taylor whose Taylor Crane Group which included Taylor Crane Hire Quigley crane hire and Duncan crane and was based on the remnants of Peterhead Crane Hire, hire. It is hard to be sure, but one hand may be insufficient to count off the number of company failures along the way.

Roger Quenby and his team appear to have worked hard to ensure that GBK did not inherit the genes of its descendants, however the heavy debt load it took on and a number of unfortunate crane accidents, made the task more of a challenge than it might have been.