Market Consolidation

The phenomenal growth that the aluminium tower industry experienced during the 1970’s and early 1980’s could not continue unabated and during the 1980’s there was considerable consolidation in the market. This was driven partly by the economic recession in the UK at that time and partly by the competitive pricing that had broken out between suppliers. The BET group having gone on the acquisition trail in the 1970’s now found that it owned 3 separate tower manufacturers; Stephens & Carter, Zig-Zag and Martin Thomas with three different factories. Rationalisation was forced on them by the general economic situation and the three companies were merged to form Access International based at the S&C site at Maldon in Essex. All three tower brands continued in production and although significant component integration was achieved and duplicate factories were eliminated. All of this occurred at the cost of extended delivery times and poor aftersales service. Delivery times were so extended that the former employees and designers of the Zig-Zag brand were encouraged by their customers to set up a rival production unit and hence the Eurotower brand was born. It used the same overall dimensions as the Zig-Zag but featured a number of product improvements including the unique dog’s bone cast spigot design.

The difficult times during this period also saw the demise of Access Equipment Ltd and their production facility at Hemel Hempstead. Their manufacturing operation was subsumed into the UpRight Ireland operation in Dublin and the sales and hire side was consolidated with John Rusling Ltd now located in Newport Shropshire and trading as Instant Zip-Up

Other changes during this decade were the management buyout of the Eiger brand from its parent company the Northern Scaffold Group and the management buyout of Altrex from Bijstede in Holland.