Lifting the standard
February 1st 2007

Offering an end-to-end crane service, Lifting Solutions' expertise goes from design to manufacture and installation, right through to training, maintenance and repairs

In the last few months South Yorkshire Lifting equipment specialists Lifting Solutions has seen some major developments; recently celebrating its 30th anniversary and with business booming, 2007 looks to be just as exciting for the fast growing company. Set up in1975 as a rapid response lifting equipment supplier, Lifting Solutions (formally Chain and Rope Services) has grown from a simple chain and rope supplier into a full-service engineering operation with its own machine shop and fabrication capability, employing more than 30 staff.

In June last year Lifting Solutions outgrew its Hoyland based premises and moved to a larger 14,000ft2 site in Thurnscoe. The move has already proved to be worth the upheaval, as the premises now accommodates the new machine shop – recently opened due to customer demand for machining capabilities. Now able to offer a more complete all round service to internal departments and external clients, Lifting Solutions can design, manufacture and machine its own pins, bushes, pulleys, gear blanks and pinion shafts – making the business more competitive and enabling work to be taken on that used to be outsourced elsewhere.

With the larger premises and extra workshop space being less restrictive, the firm has been able to complete a 25t high duty crane for a major customer in the steel industry. The mammoth crane order allowed Lifting Solutions to demonstrate ability to offer a full crane service – from design to manufacture and installation, right through to training, maintenance and repairs.

Verlinde Completing a major partnership initiative with one of the world's leading manufacturers in the lifting and handling equipment sector, Lifting Solutions now offers the full Verlinde range including ATEX products and can boast being one of only a dozen or so UK distributors of the French brand. Spares for the Verlinde range can now also be ordered directly from Lifting Solutions. Selected by Verlinde for its engineering competence and impressive track record – including high profile projects such as Portsmouth's Spinnaker Tower and three separate Olympic contracts – the significant partnership with Verlinde gives Lifting Solutions the capability to offer an end-to-end crane manufacturing solution backed up by the technical and marketing resources of one of the world's leading names.

It's these high profile projects that have added to Lifting Solutions' growing reputation as able to adapt to customer needs and diversify where required - to fulfil more specialist and unusual requests.

Involved in the Athens 2004 Olympics, Lifting Solutions supplied over 27km of steel wire rope to create the stunning effects in the opening and closing ceremonies. Called upon again for yet another 'cloak and dagger' Olympic project, it was Lifting Solutions that supplied a further 5km of rope to hold up Europe's biggest ever banner – as part of London's lobbying of the IOC towards the successful Olympic bid.

Lifting Solutions recently added stainless steel wire swaged products to its growing range of products and services – just one example of how Lifting solutions has diversified and strengthened its customer offering in recent years. Lifting Solutions is able to design and fabricate a wide range of swaged products for an array of applications to meet the growing design led demand from architects and interior designers, for example.

Further development Looking forward, Jonathan Moorhouse, managing director of Lifting Solutions said: "There is still a lot of further development and expansion potential for Lifting Solutions. We have now doubled in size in the last five years and intend to keep pushing on to stay one step ahead of the competition. By consistently looking to grow and develop the business in new ways we hope to ensure our long-term prosperity and enjoy a further thirty successful years in the lifting industry. In what is generally a shrinking local marketplace, we are now winning bigger contracts further afield which is extremely positive for the business.

"We have supplied services to the Royal Family, Kew Gardens, been involved with three separate Olympic contracts as well as the spectacular Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth; we really never shy away from a challenge. It has taken time and effort to get where we are today and we now have the management team and facilities in place to offer bespoke end-to-end-crane manufacturing solutions and services, whilst still providing the rapid response lifting equipment service that was originally our entire business."

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