Pictured, from left, are Riwal UK management, Dave Freebody, operations manager ; Les Warren, general manager; and Tim White, sales and commercial manager.

Riwal, an international powered access equipment specialist headquartered in The Netherlands, last week announced that it has entered the U.K. market. The recently established Riwal UK is being managed by Les Warren, general manager, Tim White, sales and commercial manager, and Dave Freebody, operations manager.

These three senior managers, with a combined experience of more than 50 years in the access industry, identified the need for a ‘customer-focused company, offering premium-quality equipment allied to high levels of service and reliability’ to fill the gap in the UK market. They approached Riwal with this concept and following initial meetings early this year the local company was founded on June 1.

In the last couple of weeks the first machines have been shipped from Dordrecht, The Netherlands, to the new location in Chelveston, a small village in Northhamptonshire, England, between London and Birmingham. Whilst the core focus of the business will initially be at the larger end of the market (booms with working heights of more than 26 meters and scissors greater than 20 meters), Riwal UK does offer the full range of powered access products ranging from 5-meter scissorlifts to the world’s largest 103-meter truck-mounted boom for hire.

Riwal has more than 60 branches in The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, France, Spain, Slovenia, Croatia, Kazakhstan, Poland, the Baltic states and Brazil. Riwal is active in other European countries and the Middle East through joint ventures and has a rental fleet of more than 12,000 aerial work platforms and 2,000 forklifts and telehandlers. Riwal’s revenues in 2007 were about €160 million (about U.S. $225 million).

In April the International Powered Access Federation honored Riwal as “international rental company of the year.”