One of the huge advantages of AMES UK acquisition of Kelkay has been investment to drive business expansion. The site near Snaith, from where Kelkay’s aggregate and paving operations are run, has expanded by over 20% this autumn in preparation for the forecasted increase in garden centre business.

AMES UK have demonstrated their confidence in the team by funding the £1.5m investment in logistics and packaging machinery which has been installed since August.

Richard Slade said: “It’s been an exciting, if challenging, few months. We’ve undertaken a pretty major reorganisation of the site to double our internal pallet spaces and expand the external pallet space to accommodate more than 12,000. And while we were making these changes, we’ve also expanded our operations in Cork to cope with the business growth in Ireland of more than 100%.”

Richard, who has been responsible for Kelkay operations for several years is now running the business across all AMES UK sites, including La Hacienda and True Temper. This has also meant further investment in business infrastructure to improve communications through IT and the installation of new servers that allow the whole group to be operated effectively under the new management team.