“We could see a niche in the market” NXGen boss reports spike in demand for specialist re-rentals

Russ Jones, group managing director at NXGen, a niche rental firm specialising in cranes and heavy lifting, is a busy man.

The company runs a fleet of self-propelled modular transporter (SPMT) – long trains of multi-axle trailer like vehicles designed to carry heavy loads – as well as more than 15 cranes, ballast pumps, mooring winches and other niche equipment which it supplies either directly to customers or through re-rental agreements.

And, Jones says, demand for this sort of specialist kit is growing as more large pre-fabricated are being used across a variety of industries.

“If you look at where our equipment is working, it’s oil and gas, renewables, the microchip industry, civil projects – it’s very varied you know,” he says. “There’s a lot of work in each of those, that’s for sure.”

For NXGen, which gets much of its work through operating as a specialist’s specialist – providing niche equipment to heavy lift firms when don’t quote have enough – it’s a lucrative area of the market in which to operate.

“We could see a niche in the market in Europe to fill in for the bigger companies where they are short at peak times,” Jones tells Rental Briefing. “One day someone might want a power pack [unit for an SPMT) or they might want 60 [SPMT] axles for three months. We cater for all.”

NXGen says it differs from other bare lease firms such as Bigge, Schaften or Maxim because it is able to also supply operators if necessary as well as rental equipment.

The company, which only came into being since the pandemic, may focus on highly specialist equipment but it its reach is global.

Global reach

While Jones himself works from an office in the UK’s Midlands, the company operates its fleet of Scheuerle SPMT and auxiliary equipment such as power pack units, winches and ballast pumps from its hub in Breda, in the Netherlands.

Separately, the company also rents out a fleet of crawler cranes, rough terrain cranes and telecrawler cranes on a long-term basis from its US home in Texas. It operates an Asian business from offices in Singapore. And, the company also runs an engineering business assisting customers with lift studies or writing RFQs for major heavy lifting projects.

The company is one of a growing number of firms benefitting from the burgeoning re-rentals market where rental firms outsource demand for more specialist equipment to re-rental partners which are better able to find the CapEx needed to invest in specialist machinery and maintenance, and to drive utilisation rates in niche areas. Others are using re-rentals to help offer customers a one-stop shop for general construction machinery despite moving into speciality areas themselves.

“There is a huge demand for equipment in the market. More and more, we’re seeing that customers want flexibility,” Jones says. “So rather than going down the traditional sourcing route, many of them have bought their own trailers and need support with personnel only or just maintenance and additional equipment.”

Recent projects have included assisting a customer with an urgent crankshaft replacement for an SPMT module, transporting bridge beams for the UK’s HS2 project, and providing a Kobelco CK1100G-2 crane to a customer site in West Texas on a long term bare lease agreement.

Jones, a 20-year veteran of the road haulage and heavy lift industry, set up the business with a group of former contacts and colleagues during the pandemic.

“It’s such a small world. Everybody knows everybody,” he says. “You work in the sector for twenty years and actually all your friend base is in the industry.”