Blue Dart splits from British Vita
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MANAGEMENT OF Manchester-based Blue Dart Transport has agreed to buy the company's goodwill and certain of its assets from the parent British Vita group, and is planning to transfer a slimmed down part of the operation to Trafford Park enterprise zone.
The deal, which is subject to shareholders' agreement later this month, takes effect from the end of August, and is worth approximately £800,000.
British Vita is to operate its own distribution services, and approximately 130 of Blue Dart's personnel at depots in Manchester, London, Scotland, and North-east England will be made redundant.
The new company, Blue Dart Freight Services Ltd, will take over all of the satellite operations, but is moving from its present headquarters at Stakehill Industrial Estate to Trafford Park. A company spokesman explained to CM that this will get around the problem of high rates and rents at the purposebuilt site, as the new premises, although older, come rent free for the first 10 years.
Existing Blue Dart employees will be invited to apply for the 90 vacancies which the new company intends to fill, and it is expected that substantial numbers will move, but as the conditions of employment are different, particularly as the new company is smaller and its headquarters is in a different part of Manchester, it is likely that some will leave.
British Vita will still require some of its plastics and rubber goods to be transported by outside companies, and it expects that Blue Dart will be among the companies which will quote for this work.
In its present form, Blue Dart depends on British Vita for one third of the work carried out by its 150 lorries and 250 semitrailers, but the new company will require only 67 tractive units and almost 200 semi-trailers, the trailers being leased for five years from British Vita.
Blue Dart's management is paying £75,000 for 100 per cent control over the equity of the new company, the remaining £500,000 coming from a combi nation of finance institutions, including banks and hire purchase companies. A further £350,000 is being paid for the purchase of such assets as the tractive units, and for leasing the semi-trailers.
Last year, Blue Dart lost £339,000 before tax on a total turnover of £5.76m, but the new company is pledged to cutting its overheads as part of a quest for profitability, and the move to the Trafford Park EZ will go a considerable way towards achieving this.