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Market Report: Sawing & Cutting National service Nixon Hire claims to operate the largest toilet hire fleet in northern England and Scotland, backed by a sophisticated service operation. Alan Guthrie reports. Family-owned John Nixon Ltd’s hire business splits broadly into three. Since its foundation in 1967, the Newcastle-based company has offered non-operated plant and tool hire. A site accommodation operation was established 20 years later, following the purchase of the plant division of Stanley Miller, a local construction company. Founder and Chairman John Nixon’s children entered the business soon afterwards and in 1994 a toilet hire operation was added, which proved successful from the start. In March 2005, the company acquired the Owen Pugh toilet hire business, which was re-branded as Nixon Hire in January 2006, with depots retained at Cupar (Fife) and Glasgow. Also last year, new outlets were opened in Aberdeen and Dundee. Besides the Newcastle head office, other branches are located at Berwick, Bradford, Edinburgh, Perth, Stockton on Tees and Sunderland. Each depot offers products from all three Nixon divisions. “2005 was a landmark year,” states Chris Nixon, Director of Plant Hire. “We demonstrated our ability to grow both organically and by acquisition, making the transition from a regional to a potentially national company.” The toilet fleet totals an impressive 3,500 units, comprising models from Satellite and Thal in approximately equal proportions. “We buy approximately 300 new toilets every year,” states Graham Nixon, Director of the Toilet Hire Division. “These are initially added to our event hire fleet and after 12 months they are hired into the general construction market. The durability of the products means that we are increasing the overall size of the fleet significantly each year. “Telephone enquiries are fielded by two dedicated national call centres in Newcastle and Glasgow. Toilet hire is now a genuinely national business for us. Our own fleet serves customers from the northern tip of Scotland to as far south as Sheffield. We currently crosshire to clients in areas such as London, the Midlands and Wales, but we will add more of our own depots as necessary.” The importance of service The toilet hire division has supplied events like the Great North Run, Great Manchester Run and the Tall Ships Race. However, the main target market is construction and related industries. As in other areas of the Nixon Hire operation, service is regarded as the vital factor for success. “We believe we have the most sophisticated service control operation in the country,” contends Graham Nixon, “We have a centralised real-time computer database and vehicles that are tracked by a satellite based global positioning system (GPS). This allows us to specify to our customers a ‘window’ of one hour within which we will deliver to, or visit, his particular site. On a Monday, say, we can tell a customer we will arrive between 3-4pm the following Thursday to service a toilet. “This is based on a software system called Paragon, which is typically used by companies such as larger supermarket chains. It integrates with our Windows-based MCS-rm package from MCS. Even if a building contractor is working at a greenfield site that does not have a designated postcode, our GPS system will pinpoint exactly where the toilet has been delivered, facilitating subsequent service visits. “The MCS-rm software has been ‘live’ since March 2005 across the company. Our managers are deriving huge benefits from the knowledge they can obtain from the in-depth reporting functions at the click of a button. All necessary safety information advice sheets are stored within the computer system as PDFs, which are printed out and attached to the contract at the time of hire. Images of products and parts are also linked in to the system for easy identification, so hire desk staff who may join us from outside the industry can be fully proficient in a very short time.” Rapid response times Throughout its operation, the company aims to respond to breakdowns, emergency service requests or other site issues within one hour. Last year, it took staff an average of just 51 minutes to be with the customer. Nixon Hire is aiming to achieve ISO 9001 quality accreditation by the end of this year. Graham Nixon reports that the site accommodation hire business is also strong. “We have more than 500 welfare units in the fleet, as well as site offices and anti-vandal storage containers, most of which are made to our specifications. Our latest welfare addition, for example, incorporates a 6ft office area to meet growing demand from our customers. We are able to offer a complete package, including sanitation facilities and generators to provide power in the cabins.” Nixon Hire is also operating towable Groundhog welfare units from GenQuip. Both petrol and diesel versions are included in the fleet, and the latter are said to have proved to be so quiet in operation that the company will be adding more shortly. The business has also recently invested £2.8m in new delivery vehicles, serving all parts of its operation. Constantly evolving Chris Nixon adds that the business is constantly evolving. “We design our site cabins so that they incorporate forklift pockets for easier manoeuvring during delivery and collection. If low-cost airlines can achieve turnround times of 25 minutes for aeroplanes, we similarly aim to fine-tune the logistics of our own operations for maximum efficiency and utilisation.” Nixon Hire’s recent growth has been so strong that it is well on track to meet a challenging rate of development that it set itself in 2003, namely to double its then £10m annual turnover within five years. “If we continue at the same pace, then we will achieve £20m one year ahead of schedule,” contends Chris Nixon. “Turnover was up by 25% to £16.27m for the year ending 31 December 2005, and we have experienced a terrific start to 2006, with turnover up by an average of 36% in January and February compared with the same months last year.” Not surprisingly, the company, which currently employs 230 staff throughout its operation, has plans to expand. This has already started with the official opening this month of a depot in Carlisle, serving the northwest of England and southwest Scotland. “We have looked carefully at this region and initial feedback from potential customers in these areas has been very positive,” states Chris Nixon. “Because we offer equipment from all three divisions at each of our branches, we need large premises with a lot of concrete yard space and finding suitable premises is always difficult. We are currently building a new bespoke depot at Sunderland and plan to upgrade Aberdeen to a larger depot as soon as possible. “We are exhibiting at SED for the first time this year, in order to raise our national profile within the industry. Bradford is currently the farthest point south in our network, but if we decide to expand, say, along the M62, we will need high-calibre staff and we will want to attract the best people.” • T
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