Tanfield invests in UpRight brand

The UK's Tanfield Group acquired upright's powered access business in april for £7 million (€10,1 million). The deal included the product designs and use of the brand name for all the UpRight powered machines, as well as the distribution businesses in the US and Japan.

Tanfield is shifting manufacture of the UpRight machines from Ireland to a newly leased facility in Washington, Tyne & Wear, UK. UpRight International (UI) in Ireland will now focus exclusively on aluminium scaffoldingproducts.

Darren Kell, (pictured right) Tanfield's business development director, told CE that the priority was to reduce lead times on UpRight products - currently at around 16 weeks - and to reinvigorate the brand; “There's still a lot of goodwill and sentiment in the market for the brand. We believe if we can regain respect for the UpRight name - improve spare parts and customer support - we'll be able to re-establish it as one of the market leaders.”

On the cards is a reintroduction of the larger boom products that UI had stopped making, with the priority likely to be the AB46 and AB62 articulated booms next year, and after that the SB46/60/80 telescopic booms.