Sense in the market

Fleet

Nobody asked for a recession, but it is Fallon's belief that his company can use the weak market to its advantage. "There is a host of things we should be doing to come out of this a better business" he said. "One of them is to re-examine it in terms of fleet we employ in the rental business. I guess there isn't the idea of reducing fleet, but using time to re-asses the fleet and where possible make the necessary improvements.

There are a lot of items that there has been traditionally a high demand for and in fact there hasn't even been availability in the market, it is time to renegotiate with suppliers for renewal of fleet."

"Some sense has come back into the market. Suppliers are definitely keen to do business and they are keen to do business with deals that make sense."

"So the preferred option for us is not to sit back and look at our fleet and say ‘right' what can we do better with our existing fleet?' but what parts of the fleet need to be renewed and reviewed - and most importantly we take the fleet that is not enjoying the same utilization [as last year] in Dubai for example and redeploying it. Abu Dhabi continues to grow of course, and now we need to look at Saudi Arabia and Oman."

Saudi Arabia is an area in which Byrne has established a presence recently, while an operation in Oman is set to open in the next two months. Opening in a downturn might seem foolhardy, but with the Kingdom in particular investing in huge infrastructure projects relating to rail, road and utilities.

Advice

Finally, Fallon has some advice for professionals in the construction sector. He counseled; "Look closely at what the equipment that you are using is. Look closely at who is available to support you in terms of the rental side of the business and look very closely at Byrne when you do this because we are very keen to sit down with our customers and say ‘how can we help you?' It's all very well for us to say ‘this is our fleet - rent from us' , but without doing some fact finding what customers actually need, we are spending quite a bit of time on that at the moment."

In summary Fallon said "I think people need to stop this ‘headless chicken approach to the market' and looking at where to find the next piece of business - and start focusing and looking after customers. There has been that ‘take it or leave it' approach in the region, I've had it from suppliers and customers have had it from other rental suppliers - you know the ‘that's my final price' - bang finished. Whereas now, negotiation is the name of the game," he concluded.

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