Interview: Jeremy Fish on the new Ardent Hire

Jeremy Fish has more energy than most, and when he commits to something - whether it’s a business strategy or providing aid to the Ukraine - he goes in 100%.

We will come to the subject of Ukraine later, but first we discuss the major changes at Ardent Hire; “We decided to come out of excavators, diggers, dumpers, rollers and MEWPs about 15 to 16 months ago as we found that the market was increasingly commoditised,” he tells IRN.

“We were seeing big increases in the capital cost of equipment. We were also seeing eroding returns as new players were just competing on price and destroying the market. Another aspect was the quality of earnings that we were getting from these sectors was poor.”

He adds; “The customers that we were dealing with, primarily groundworkers, were somewhat fragile in their financial creditworthiness. They disputed their invoices…they just basically didn’t pay them.”

The company spent 2024 selling off its 2,000 excavators, site dumpers, rollers, and MEWPs, and went through the difficult process of reducing the number of its depots from ten to six and cutting the workforce by about 40%. At the same time, it invested £50 million (€59.8 million) in telehandlers and roto telehandlers.

Ardent Hire now has about 2,500 telehandlers. (Photo: Ardent Hire)

It now has about 2,500 telehandlers, 110 roto models and 150 smart fuel management systems.

“That investment is starting now to materialise in the fleet,” Fish says. “Our business is now a lot less transactional. That means we’ve got more time to prepare our equipment, organise and run our workshops, and spend time with our customers”.

“I’m now more interested in the customers that are looking for a long-term relationship, and that want to leverage the very considerable portfolio of technology that we can now offer.”

Fuel supply business

One regulatory change also gave Ardent an opportunity for a new business stream. A change in the duty rate for diesel in the UK in 2022 has helped Ardent promote its anti-fuel theft system. 

In the past, marked gas oil or red diesel was taxed at 10.18 pence (€0.12) per litre (ppl) for off-road use. However, since April 2022, using red diesel in cranes, earthmoving equipment and mobile generators on construction sites has become illegal. 

Ardent Fuel-IT helps prevent fuel theft. (Photo: Ardent Hire)

As construction contractors are now forced to use white diesel (at a duty rate of 52.95 ppl), the fuel on construction sites has become a target for criminals.

“After the government changed the legislation for red diesel, many of our customers were worried about not only the rising costs but also fuel theft… or let’s call it ‘misappropriation of fuel’,” Fish says.

“People can’t do anything to prevent this. That’s why we’ve introduced our smart fuel management systems, called Fuel-IT, which helps people account for fuel and makes it harder to steal people’s fuel.”

The system uses digital technology to alert customers if anyone is trying to tamper with the fuel tank or extracting fuel.

“Customer effectively could now understand how much fuel is going into which machine and what its hours are, and then identify all sorts of reports with that,” he said. “There is no similar product available in the market.”

Higher customer approval

Also, in part because of the success of the Fuel-IT product, it has led to a greater focus by Ardent Hire on long-term business with its customers.

Jeremy Fish, CEO of Ardent Hire (Photo: Ardent Hire)

“Our challenges are we’ve now got such a rich and deep technology offering that we cannot possibly explain it to the customer on several hires,” Fish says. “A customer’s got to say to us: I’m interested in adopting this technology over the next 12 to 18 months.”

He says a switch from a transactional to a relationship-driven business can improve productivity and cut costs and risks.

“When Ardent was founded in 2015, its Net Promoter Score (NPS) was 35. Today it’s 70. And we measure that net promoter score through an independent third party, instead of measuring it ourselves.

“Our plan is to become a specialist…exceptional at what we do, rather than just good at what we do. My plan is to take our NPS from 70 to 80.”

NPS is a measure of customer advocacy used by thousands of organisations worldwide. It monitors the likelihood of a customer recommending a business to a friend or colleague. A customer that scores a nine or a 10 is a promoter; seven or an eight is indifferent; and a customer score of six or below is a detractor, which often means “don’t use this company.”

Ardent-EYE

Ardent Hire has also developed a solution that uses human recognition cameras to reduce by 50% the number of ‘false alerts’ on construction sites.

“Our IT team has developed an AI module - we call it Ardent-EYE - which uses AI processing to filter out false alerts,” Fish says.

“A false alert might be where a telehandler is moving away from you when you walk in its path. Because health and safety managers receive too many alerts, they don’t know how serious the problem is,” he says.

“With the Ardent solution, the system only reports the serious near misses, and therefore it gives health and safety managers a true picture of safety and good driving practices on their sites.”

He adds that the company’s self-developed telematics information system, Site Manager, has won different awards, including European Rental Association (ERA)’s Best Digital Innovation Award in 2022.

2025 outlook

Despite the fact that interest rates might go up and housing building remains sluggish, Ardent Hire is “extremely positive” about its 2025 outlook.

“While some rental companies are still struggling, we’re not seeing that at Ardent at all,” Fish says.

“We’re seeing a buoyant market for our products and services. More and more customers come to us saying, ‘we want to deal with Ardent because of your service, and also because you think slightly differently to other rental companies’.”

He says Ardent’s business is going “extremely well” and “far above expected” under the new model, although it’s a smaller business with smaller revenues and fewer people.

“If I had more capex, I could buy more machines, and I’d put that out on hire,” he says.

Supporting Ukraine

While transforming Ardent Hire’s businesses over the past few years, Fish also set up the Plant and Hire Alliance in 2022 to raise funds and deliver equipment and goods to Ukraine.

The Alliance consists of about 70 rental companies and equipment owners that want to help provide humanitarian aid to displaced Ukrainians.

In 2022, Jeremy Fish set up the Plant and Hire Alliance to raise funds and deliver equipment and goods to Ukraine. (Photo: Ardent Hire)

“I didn’t set this up with a plan in mind”, he tells IRN, “There was no plan. Yes, it was just trying to help, and it’s just grown and grown. I hope the Ukraine war ends. What we will do after that, I have no idea.

“We’ve sent now about £6 million worth of goods to Ukraine. Our latest dispatches were 72 8kVA generators, where we raised the funds at a JCB charity lunch back in November. And we’ve just sent 20,000 gifts to Ukrainian children,” he says.

“We’ve already got 100 pallets of toys for next Christmas. And a member of the Plant and Hire Alliance is very kindly storing those in a warehouse in Peterborough for us,” he says, adding that the Alliance will work with Rotary International to deliver the toys to Ukraine.

The Alliance has also sent 100 tonnes of food, 300 suitcases, 10 trucks of medical supplies, 50 tons of medical supplies and 1,000 brand-new mattresses to Ukraine. To learn more about the alliance, visit https://aid-alliance.com/

Fish no doubt deserves enormous credit for the energy that he has brought to the Ukraine cause. That he has done so during a period of enormous change at his own business makes it all the more remarkable.