New depot to help TC Harrison seize the growth opportunities

The Sheffield-headquartered dealership, which sells used and new JCB machines and parts to the agricultural, construction and industrial markets, opened the new depot in Birstall last month, after the closure of its site in Garforth.

Robert Wilson, joint managing director at TC Harrison Group, told the Yorkshire Post the new site, which was bought and refurbished by the company for around £300,000, will help the firm “seize opportunities in the West Yorkshire area”.

The depot houses a two-bay workshop, a reception area, a warehouse space, and an office.

Mr Wilson said the new site is within easy reach of the M62 and M1, adding: “It gives us a more substantial facility in the West Yorkshire area, where we can now take on service work, because we had no service ability before in Garforth, it wasn’t big enough.

“So we can take on service work with our two-bay workshop, we can display machines in that depot and hopefully be able to sell machines to customers in the West Yorkshire area, and have a much, better and deeper stock of parts to support the machines already in that area and a very comfortable environment for our customers to come and see us.”

Third generation family-owned TC Harrison Group, which celebrated 80 years in business in 2011, includes the JCB dealership arm, which operates from depots in Sheffield, Leeds, Sedgefield, Lincoln and Derby, employing 100 people across the five sites. TC Harrison also has a Ford dealership arm, with sites in Peterborough, Stamford, St Neots, St Ives, Derby and Buxton, as well as a business-to-business leasing arm for motor vehicles, based in Sheffield.

“We’ll have four people in the Birstall development day in day out, and a further four people coming and going each day, so that’s eight people attached to that site,” said Mr Wilson.

The previous site at Garforth lacked a workshop provision and had limited parts and warehousing facilities, said Mr Wilson. And the site, which was rented, “was not quite as close to our customers as we would like”, added Mr Wilson.

Turnover for TC Harrison in the year to December 31, 2011 increased from £197.9m to £216.8m, but pre-tax profit fell by more than £1m from £3.4m to £2.1m.

Revenue in the JCB distributor arm was up by more than £17m from £39.4m in 2010 to £56.6m in 2011.

Mr Wilson said: “We have bucked the trend in the construction industry by achieving some growth and JCB have got big growth plans for the future.

“They are looking for 45 per cent market share in the UK and we want to be part of it. We will certainly be looking at bringing more people into the business to help us.”

JCB reported a 37 per cent surge in turnover to £2.75bn in 2011 while underlying earnings hit £355m, up from £235m in 2010.

Mr Wilson said that trading conditions have been “quite buoyant” in the last couple of years, “because the exchange rate against the rest of the world has made it very advantageous for our customers to sell their equipment into the rest of the world”.

“So currency exchanges have helped immensely and as they have cleared their fleets it’s given us the opportunity to supply them with new ones”, he added.

But Mr Wilson cautioned: “I’m afraid at this moment in time we seem to have hit a period of fragile business confidence.

“But we are still in a very good profitable state and we are looking forward to growing further.”

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