p eter Matta freely admits that he is the sort of
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person who likes to do better than anyone else. This philosophy is reflected in his fleet of road sweepers which, he says, he uses to deliberately create an impressive image for his firm: We recently spent nearly £100,000 on a Mercedes unit with a road sweeper body on top. When we bought it I thought we might be the first company in the UK to have a Mercedes Atego with a sweeper body, but I've done some research and now it turns out that we are the first people in the world to have such a rig."
Since then Matta has added an Atego 1523 to his fleet and has an Atego 1528 on order from a specialist bodybuilder in Denmark. But his quest to be ahead of the field does not stop there: When I order a sweeper I discuss my requirements with body manufacturer Johnston and it incorporates my ideas into the new piece of kit. So far I have come up with five ideas which the firm now offers as extras to other customers, and I estimate that about 70% of the stuff they sell now includes them."
Matta does not receive any money for his innovative thinking, preferring instead to cement a good relationship with the major UK road sweeper builder.
"Johnston has just flown me out to Denmark to look at the Danish firm Beam which it has taken over," he says. "Beam offers a more bespoke service and will build sweepers tailored to customers' needs. When I went and saw them I found they had already developed most of the things I was thinking about so they have had a major hand in building my latest vehicle." Matta is keen to stress that the average sweeper is not just a piece of dirty equipment trundling along the edge of the road but a hightech vehicle capable of performing a lot of different functions, from cleaning up diesel and petrol leaks following road accidents—the firm offers a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week emergency service—to ripping out weeds because councils can no longer use effective weed killers.
He formed his company in 1983 after spending z5 years working on heavy plant: "I was one of the few plant operatives who had a Class r HGV licence, At the time I was working for English China Clay, which ran two sweepers of its own, and I got to drive them. I thought, hold on a minute, I like this, so I went and got a loan of ffr,5oo from the bank and bought my own second-hand sweeper.
Construction
"When I did this 1 had no orders but got a couple of enquiries in the first week and eventually landed a contract with a major construction firm which was building an AS DA store," he recalls. "This involved carting away thousands of tonnes of muck and they needed to keep the surrounding roads clean."
Within three years the firm, which was one of the first in the South-West to enter the private road-sweeping market, was running five machines. Matta then decided to switch from buying second-hand vehicles to new ones. "Buying second-hand means you are getting someone else's cast-offs and we were having lots of problems with breakdowns," he says. "I thought it was about time I bought a new vehicle and I haven't looked back since."
Matta does most of his work for the county council, which in some years can account for 0 8o% of his turnover. But he is also keen not to turn away anyone, however small, and regularly invoices 5o different organisations ranging from large construction companies to small farmers who just need their driveways cleaning.
Being located in Cornwall has its benefits and drawbacks. One of the benefits is that there is only one other firm offering a similar service. Because of the lack of competition, Matta says he has not had to advertise the business since 1985. "People hear about me by word of mouth and ask me what I can do for them," he says.
However, Cornwall does have its disadvantages. It is not only the poorest county in Britain; it is one of the poorest areas in the whole of Western Europe.
"This is reflected in the amount of money the council has to spend on keeping its roads clean," he points out. "I can usually expect 708o% of my work to come from the council but it has to cut its road maintenance budget virtually every year. and this year I will be lucky to get 50% from that source."
The other problem is one of geography. "In Cornwall the only way you can go is east, and although I do work as far away as Exeter I have had to turn down offers of work around the M25 because of the travelling cost involved. I would rather stay local and maximise my profit by offering the best service."
Although he is loyal to Cornwall, Matta does not think much of the two biggest events to hit the county in the last year: the visit of Tony Blair and the eclipse: "The only good thing we got out of Blair's visit was two days' work cleaning the streets before his arrival. I don't think he will do much for the county. The government is dragging its heels over providing funding to match that offered to us by Europe under the Objective i regeneration budget so we will lose the money from Europe. It is also unlikely to improve the mile stretch of the A3o near my yard, which if it did would open up the county for more tourism and industrial development."
White elephant
The eclipse was the biggest white elephant I have known," he adds, "It also had a bad effect on my business—because of the expected crowds the council suspended most of our road work for a three-week period. I don't know anyone in the county who did any good by it."
But despite these setbacks, South West Sweepers is staying ahead of the game by investing in state-of-the-art equipment and Matta is reasonably confident of the future, especially as house building is increasing in Cornwall. He has another idea up his sleeve to introduce something which the South-West has not seen before. Matta isn't giving anything away, but given his penchant for invention the chances are that he will succeed...