Overseas Aid
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Allmakes claims to have the UK's largest stock of replacement parts for Land Rovers. Back in 1977, Peter Hands, the man in charge, came from Unipart with his two co-directors to set the company up. He was just 30-years old. From those early days, a large part of the company's business has come from overseas. During the last five years, annual turnover has grown from £7 million to £16 million.
The company's headquarters and warehouse at Abingdon in Oxfordshire carries some 4,500 line items to the value of about £1.5m. Major customers are third world countries where Land Rover's parts back-up falls short of demand.
Two years ago, the company received the Queen's Award for Export but not for exporting Land Rover spare parts, although
that undoubtedly opened the door to other lucrative markets. "About seven years ago we concluded that a lot of customers wanted us to do other work for them in the workshop servicing area," Hands told CM.
A year after offering to rebuild Land Rovers for the Angolan Government. Al!makes was offered a slightly different business opportunity although Angola was an area which had very little tradition of British involvement.
The contract was to help get the country's transport infrastructure up and running again. It is a land rich in oil, diamonds and coffee but natural wealth is of little use with out the means to move it. The Government was fast running out of money so could not buy new vehicles. But it did have about 12,000 Russian military trucks in various states of disrepair, laying about all over the country They were mainly four tonnes 4x4 GAZ and five tonnes payload 6x6 Ural vehicles which could be made serviceable at a fraction Russian military bar of what it would cost to buy new vehicles. Initially Al!makes was to supply 700 rebuilt Bedford trucks and fit Perkins Phaser engines to 500 of the Russian vehicles.
They set up shop in bomb-blasted workshops, left behind by the Portuguese fifteen years previously, but had to spend about $1.5m on the building to stop the rain coming in and equipment and parts going out, before they could get started. "Replacement parts are as good as currency in that part of the world but the local ability to service trucks was virtually non-existent. We ended up trying to service vehicles as well as repairing and upgrading them," Hands related.
"We had to make parts for the Russian trucks over here. They are very robust, but the power unit is a petrol engine based on 1930's American technology. It has an external regulator which gives constant problems, the wiring is primitive and consequently tends to short out on a regular basis."
Allmakes was also given the inter city bus service to run over roads which had not been repaired for years and with bridges destroyed during the civil war. The rolling stock was mainly 32 seater Brazilian-built MercedesBenz buses with cracked frames and rotten bodywork. In the event, the contract came to an end when, with only about two thirds complete, the money dried up.
Another side of Allmakes' business is providing personnel to the UN to deal with logistics planning, transportation and communications. It employs some 450 people around the world, including 65 at the Abingdon HQ and 20 people at its plant, at Elsham Wold, just south of the Humber.
This home-based part of the business was established about four years ago to fill the troughs in activity between foreign contracts. Recently the plant has been refurbishing and painting trailers for some of the large rental companies and renovating Territorial Army vehi cles from the Yorkshire area for the Its 40ft shot-blasting bay has been in great demand as it is the only facility in the area that can shotblast in all weathers for all shapes and sizes of vehicles. We are not interested in the small jobbing business, we like the runs for economy of scale," Hands explained.
While Allmakes intends to build up the servicing side, and may look for a vehicle franchise, inevitably the major part of the company's business will continue to lay overseas.
Recent projects include rebuilding old Fiat trucks in Somalia for the World Food Programme. That is now on-hold until the conflict stops. Already, the company has plans to operate a city bus service and rebuild trucks in other parts of the African continent. Eby Bill Brock