Reynolds & Read’s sea legs celebrate 36 years

Isle of Wight-based construction equipment hirer Reynolds & Read has celebrated its 36th anniversary with a move to new headquarters and its largest acquisition to date of CASE Construction machines.
 
The company has moved from its depot at Blackwater Garage in Newport to its new headquarters at Brickfields in Binstead which at nine acres is 12 times the size of its ¾-acre predecessor.
 
This brings Reynolds & Read’s portfolio of sites to a total of five – Brickfields, Rookley (the site of a waste transfer station and home to their fleet of hire skips), Duxmore chalk pit and Knighton landfill site, all on the island, and their yard at Nursling in Southampton on the mainland which is home to five CASE eight-wheel tippers.
 
With 50% of their business being plant hire (30% of that operated and 20% self-drive), the company is currently busy carrying out groundworks for supermarket sites in Newport and Shanklin Lake, and for the island’s premier holiday camp business.
 
It is all a far cry from 1981 when Paul Read and Geoff Reynolds (now retired) started the business with a digger and a truck from a site in Gunville. A couple of site moves and an additional 40 staff later, business is booming with a total of 24 lorries and more than 50 items of plant to help meet demand.
 
“It is very good as we stand at the moment,” said Paul’s son Kieron who joined the company in 2005, bringing his own fork lift business to the Reynolds & Read remit.
 
Negotiating one of the world’s busiest waterways with a 21-tonne CASE excavator is all in a days’ work for the business.
 
Every time they purchase a CASE Construction machine from Winchester-based BPMS Ltd, who are just 34 miles away as the crow flies, it is a minimum five-hour journey by road and sea ... and that is just one way!
 
One of Reynolds & Read’s 20+ drivers will collect the CASE machine from BPMS in Otterbourne, Winchester, and transport it on a 44-tonne, 17m low-loader to Southampton Docks for the one-hour ferry crossing of the notoriously busy Solent to East Cowes, and then onto whichever one of Reynolds and Reads’ five sites on the island it is required at.
 
Most recently it was actually four vehicles - three CX130C 13-tonne excavators and a CX210C 21-tonne excavator – which brought Reynolds & Read’s portfolio of CASE machines to a total of nine. They also have a CX35B 3.5-tonne mini excavator, two CX210B 21-tonne excavators and two other CX210C excavators.
 
But Kieron said: “Obviously it is a lot more difficult than if we were based on the mainland but we do it all the time so we have it down to a fine art now. We make the journey most days.
 
“Having said that, there have been a few occasions when the ferry has been delayed because of the weather but over 36 years, that’s not too much to complain about.”
 
Reynolds & Read has been a customer of BPMS, the largest CASE dealer in the South of England, for the past seven of the 40 years the dealer has been in business.
 
“The CASE machines are very good. All our operators like them because they are well-designed and user-friendly and we like them because they are very reliable,” said Kieron.
 
“It is also good to have a local dealer so close to us who offers the complete package of sales, service and parts, although we haven’t very often called on the latter two elements as the CASE machines are so reliable. BPMS understand the logistics are more challenging for us and have always been very supportive in all the years we have been doing business with them.”
 
Despite the challenges of contemporary construction (ever-tightening Health and Safety procedures and ever-onerous paperwork!), Reynolds & Read, with the support of BPMS and CASE, is well-placed to meet them.
 
BPMS sales director Sam Edwards said: “Helping Reynolds & Read to get their new CASE acquisitions to site undamaged in the most trying of conditions is a challenge we have been happy to help them overcome!”
 
ENDS
 
Photo: Reynolds & Read working on the new slipway for the chain ferry in Cowes.