Craven Tasker reshuffle
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• Craven Tasker, Britain's third biggest trailer manufacturer, is investing £1 million in its four independently-run production plants and bringing them under the control of a central operation in Sheffield.
Its owner, Northern Irelandbased Ballyvessey, which is providing the cash, wants the manufacturing divisions in Cumbernauld, Garstang, Woodville and Sheffield to have a sharper national image to simplify sales and marketing.
It aims to boost capacity from 2,500 trailers this year, to at least 3,500 in 1990.
The four plants were run as separate Craven Tasker subsidiaries under previous parent Trafalgar House-owned John Brown. They will now all come under the name Craven Tasker Limited.
A year ago, Trafalgar House said it was selling its non-core businesses, which included transport concerns Craven Tasker and East Lancs Coachworks.
A management buyout bid for Craven Tasker at the beginning of the year failed, and in March it was sold to Ballyvessey which also owns haulier Montgomery Transport.
The centralised Craven Tasker operation is being headed by Dennis Kenyon, previously manager at Sheffield, and one of six bosses involved in the buyout attempt. He succeeds Norman Mellors who retired in the spring.
Sales and marketing director John Hope, who was also part of the buyout team, says the revamp and investment are signs that the company is "turning the corner" after the recession and the troubled final years under Trafalgar House.
He says order books are full to January and that 1988 is the busiest year for the company since 1979. Output is on course to rise next year, despite what he says will be a 5% downturn in the market.
Growth areas for the company, says Hope, will be in reefer, dry freight, curtainsider and drawbar trailers. This reflects the consumer-fuelled boom in contract hire and high street distribution. Demand for low-loaders, tippers and tilts could be sluggish.
Craven Tasker is also looking to develop more sophisticated temperature-controlled and drawbar trailers, he says, leading to a "better product range in 1990".
With a likely downturn in the market, he adds, Craven Tasker hopes to steal business from its two big rivals, Crane Fruehauf and York, and the smaller manufacturers. "Although we don't do dramatic things, customers see us as reliable," says Hope.
Each of the company's four factories will continue to specialise: Sheffield in dry freight semi-trailers; Woodville in curtainsiders, flats, tippers and rigids; Garstang in rigids, tippers and side-doors; and Cumbemauld in flats and heavies.
Extended jig assembly, paint and shot-blast facilities are planned for Woodville. Cumbernauld will also add to its shot-blast and paint operation.
The centralisation will end situations where customers phone a factory for a product and are told they must contact another subsidiary for that specific design, says Hope. Now all factories will be linked by computer to Sheffield.