Panton McLeod upgrades its fleet of vehicles

Panton McLeod Press releases

Panton McLeod's new fleet of vehicles

Water specialist Panton McLeod has announced a major £120,000 investment to upgrade its fleet of vehicles.

The company, which is the UK’s leading water quality engineering specialist, has spent £124,000 to replace its previous four-strong fleet of vans with seven new multi-purpose vehicles, which will be used by staff at its bases in the Scottish Borders and Nottingham.

The investment is the latest in a string of major developments for the firm in recent months, which has included doubling the size of its UK headquarters, winning major contracts with some of the country’s leading water suppliers and opening its first satellite office in the United States.

And the new vehicles are expected to improve the flexibility of the firm’s operations, which include cleaning underground tanks where drinking water is stored and ensuring the structures meet strict guidelines for cleanliness.

Paul Henderson - operations director

Paul Henderson, operations director with Panton McLeod, said: “Because our work is so varied and takes us to locations across the UK, our vehicles are always on the road.  We’d had our old vans for many years and, although they served us well, we reached the point where we knew that we had to replace the entire fleet in order to provide the best service possible.

“Our operations have grown over the past few years and we now have specialist teams that deal with chemical cleaning, as well as a dedicated underwater inspection unit. We needed to increase the number of vehicles we have to ensure we operate at our maximum capacity.

“Because of the nature of our specialist work, we also often have to travel to isolated locations in order to clean water storage tanks that are not easily accessible. In the past, we used our larger cleaning vans to travel to these locations but they were not always suited to the rough terrain.

“We realised that we needed to have the option of taking a reliable, off-road vehicle if we are traveling to these locations and so we now have two new 4x4s that we can use. It will make our operations run a lot more smoothly and mean we can respond to emergency calls more quickly.

“We also have a state of the art control centre which we have installed in the back of one of our new Mercedes Benz Sprinter vans, which will be used to control our underwater inspection robots. It’s a huge part of our operation and, as our previous vehicles weren’t suitable for the task, we’re delighted that we now have a van that is purely dedicated to this unit.

“It’s a major re-fit of equipment for us, but we feel it is vital in ensuring that we strengthen our position as the UK’s leading specialist drinking water cleaning firm.”

The firm has spent £60,000 on three new Mercedes Benz Sprinter vans, £30,000 on two Ford transit vans and a further £34,000 to purchase a Ford Ranger Thunder and Mitsubishi L200.

The investment, which has also included the purchase of new generators and a trailer, has been made to help the firm maintain its growing workload with water utility firms across the UK.

The upgrade comes just a few months after the firm, which has bases in the Scottish Borders and Nottingham, announced it had branched out internationally by opening its first-ever American office in Denver, CO.

It also follows a number of other recent successes for the company, which have included a cleaning contract renewal with Severn Trent Water and numerous high profile inspection jobs with some the UK’s biggest water companies.