Craven centralises design
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• Britain's third biggest trailer builder, Craven Tasker, has centralised its design operations and appointed a new design and development chief. The move comes 18 months after its takeover by Northern Ireland-based Ballyvesey Holdings.
The Sheffield-based company has taken on Philip Field from Crane Fruehauf. He will head a team of four designers, each based at one of Craven Taskers four factories, at Sheffield, Woodville, Cumbernauld and Garstang.
Every Craven Tasker plant will now handle sales for the whole group following a move to give Craven Tasker a better :orporate identity, says manag ing director Dennis Kenyon, who took over from Norman Mellors last year.
Previously customers had to deal directly with the factory that made the product they wanted.
Sheffield makes vans and reefers; Woodville curtainsiders and tippers; Cumbernauld skeletals and flats; and Garstang rigid bodies.
It has stopped short of centralising sales in Sheffield. "It is important to keep the local contact. We have improved communications," he says.
The group has increased staff by 20% to 520 and doubled the capacity of its production line at Woodville to 25 vehicles a week: it says it is working to capacity. The company can also now fit trailer bodies to other manufacturers' chassis. "We're a little more outward-looking than before," says Kenyon.
Capacity has been increased at the Cumbernauld plant by two thirds, and the workshop has been divided in two. One part will build chassis; the other will handle finishing work such as shotblasting, painting, electrics and floorings. "This gives us more control over quality," says Kenyon.
Field's brief will be to come up with a new design for CT's semi-trailer body and to prepare for the forthcoming 16.5m maximum length. "Design is something we were lacking in when I took over," adds Kenyon.
Craven Tasker is building links with other Ballyvesey subsidiaries, Montracon Trailers in Ulster, and Blumhardt in Germany, in which Ballyvesey has a 50% stake.
The Wuppertal outlet gives Craven Tasker a chance to market its products in Germany, says Kenyon: the company will be exhibiting on Blumhardt's stand at the Frankfurt show this month. It will not take any of the German's designs to sell in the UK — "we have a more comprehensive range. They don't do anything we can't do" — but it will use Wuppertal when demand is high.
The company is to continue shunning the Motor Show, says Kenyon. It has stayed away from the past two events because of rising costs, planning instead to concentrate on specialist shows and its own sales fairs.
It plans another of these — to which all its customers will be invited — at Donnington next month.