Composite moulding company, Bridgland Moulders, relies on the Norwich branch of Actavo | Hire & Sales for the timely supply of all of its scaffolding needs.
Scaffolding is essential equipment, but space constraints make it impractical for the Norfolk company to hold sufficient stocks in-house to meet its production needs.
Specialising in high-quality composite moulding, Bridgland Moulders is located at Wroxham in Norfolk, which is also home to one of its main customers, Oyster Marine, an acknowledged market leader in the design and production of hand-built, world-class, cruising yachts. Working with moulds supplied by Oyster Marine, Bridgland moulds the hulls for ocean-going luxury yachts ranging in length from 47.5ft to 85.5ft.
With hulls that can be as much as 15ft high, scaffolding is essential for the work involved and, for the past six years, Bridgland has hired systems exclusively from Actavo.
Bridgland works manager, Trevor Sizer, says: “We have bought some of our own equipment from Actavo, specifically for the hanging scaffolding we use when working on the interior of the hulls, but we hire all of the scaffolding for the external work. We’ve often discussed buying our own, but it is more practical to hire. One factor in favour of hire is that we don’t have maintenance costs, but the most important is that we don’t have to allocate valuable space to storage. Space is at a premium and we need it for production as, at any one time, we could be working on between one and four hulls, plus a range of other work that we do, which includes one-off project work and repairs.”
Bridgland routinely uses a range of K-Lock scaffolding and lightweight staging, hiring from the Actavo branch to meet variable production needs.
Bruno Stasi, Actavo’s Norwich branch manager, says: “At full production, Bridgland needs a substantial amount of scaffolding which would mean a significant capital outlay to purchase and give them the problem of storage when the equipment is not in use. It is more practical for them to hire, since it gives them the flexibility to match supply to their production needs. We have a substantial stockholding in Norwich and are always able to provide what they need, when they need it.”
Trevor Sizer agrees that the flexibility of the hire arrangement is a big advantage. He says: “We can be working on a variety of hull sizes at any one time and production timescales vary from five to six weeks for the smaller hulls, to 17 to 18 for a big hull, so our requirements can vary considerably. Actavo offers us a very good service – they always deliver on time and, just as importantly, they are prompt in collecting the scaffolding materials when we have finished with them.”
www.actavo.com
