Hire and Rental News - August 2018

52 HIRE AND RENTAL NEWS • AUGUST 2018 INDUSTRY in FOCUS orris Site Machinery’s lighting tower division is only 30 years old and it has been supplying the Australian market for 15 of those years. “Australia is our largest market outside the UK,” Chris Morris, CEO Morris Site Machinery said. “We sell into over 20 countries and Australia is our second biggest market in the world.” Its first Australian customer was Premier Hire and the first lighting tower sold into Australia over 14 years ago is still operational. Morris Site Machinery is part of Morris and Co, a family run organisation which includes a Property Division (with a portfolio of 220 commercial and development properties); the Care Division (aged care and nursing homes); Farming Division (four farming estates managing agriculture and grazing across 3500 acres); and the Site Machinery Division headed by Chris Morris. Morris Site Machinery offers welders, pumps, generators and lighting but in Australia it is all about lighting, Chris said. “We have taken five generations to Lighting towers evolving in the Aussie market “To do the common thing uncommonly well brings success.” This was the maxim of the founder of Morris and Co back in 1869 when Chris Morris’ great–great–grandfather opened a candle shop in Shrewsbury, England (also the birthplace of Charles Darwin). Today this ideology has evolved into the group’s new credo: “Excellence is standard” and governs the operations of the group’s four arms, including Morris Site Machinery. When Hire and Rental News met Chris Morris at HIRE18, we learned more about how lighting towers are evolving in, and specifically for, the Australian market. evolve from candles to LED lighting towers; and our equipment is all our own IP (intellectual property); the design, development and manufacture. “We are continually broadening and diversifying the range. Today we have about 20 variants in our range; five years ago we had two products.” The recent big news for the company was the partnership agreement with Access Services in Australia, headed by Paul Sharples. “Australians are looking for robust, compact units. Morris Site Machinery lighting towers are well made; we go in with the highest quality. “The UK has high safety standards but Australian safety standards are slightly above ours so we have up-spec’d our equipment for the Australian market. As a result, some of those Australian market innovations have made their way back to Chris Morris (right) with Mo9rris Site Machinery's International Business Director Phil Winnington on the HIRE18 stand M