TDG brine Niorth together
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• Less than three weeks after announcing "excellent" first-half profits for 1986, the Transport Development Group has now revealed plans to become one of the most potent forces in UK distribution.
It has changed the previous TUG Northern holding company into a new operating company, Harris-Reliance, which will initially be made up of eight TUG subsidiaries: Harris Distribution, Harris Road Services, Prism Logistics, Flowers Transport, Parkers Transport, DMT Coldair, Cleveland Tankers and Reliance Tankers.
The combined Harris-Reliance fleet will have between 900 to 1,000 vehicles, while the company's combined as sets will be in the region of V50 million.
Managing director of the new supergroup will be Allan Binks, previously TOG Northern chief executive.
"The object of the exercise", according to Binks, "is to have a business which can command the depth of resources, and be of sufficient scale to service large volume customers with particularly sophisticated needs, which relatively small individual TDG businesses have difficulty meeting.
"Harris-Reliance", says Binks, "will be a large, national and very sophisticated business providing the full gamut of distribution services".
Within the supergroup,
member companies will be capable of handling general freight, refrigerated transport, tanker work and high-street distribution.
Binks stresses that each individual company will still retain its self-accountability, and enjoy a high degree of autonomy. "We're not trying to create another NFC, or some large central organisation," says Binks. He wants each Company to retain the essence of TDG but to be coordinated within a central framework.
The venture is "quite a radical departure within TDG", claims Rinks.
The formation of Harris-Re liance is by no means complete and its new managing director sees it as a major growth area within the TDG. "It is certainly our intention that this company will be very much bigger, this is unlikely to be the end of the story".
News of the formation of Harris-Reliance comes just days after press speculation in the Observer that the Bunzl Group, which owns York Trailers and United Parcels, could be interested in taking over TUG.
This suggestion however, has been strongly refuted by both companies.
TUG managing director James Lockhart says the story is the result of "an offnewsday, and nothing more than speculation". Bunzl spokesman Donald Latimer said that although TUG "is obviously a very good company", its size made it an unlikely candidate for any takeover. Bunzi, however, continues to look for possible acquisitions to expand its transportation group business as does TUG.