Morris Leslie spends big with Kubota

UK rental company Morris Leslie Plant Hire Ltd (MLPH) has added 175 new Kubota mini-excavators to its UK fleet in the last 12 months as part of plans to expand its operations nationally.

The company, which acquired three new depots in 2013, said it was looking to build on this further and increase its network in 2015.

Its latest order was for Kubota mini-excavators ranging from the compact K008-3 up to the 8 t KX080-4.

Graham Ogilvie, group operations director at MLPH, said, "The last year has been an extremely busy and positive period for the group. In 2013, we acquired three new depots, which has resulted in heavy investment in plant equipment.

"In addition to servicing new depots, we always aim to replace and update our plant on an ongoing basis to ensure we have one of the youngest and most modern fleets in the industry.

"For the last four years Kubota has been a major supplier and one of the group's main excavator partners. We always receive excellent feedback from our customers as Kubota is considered by the industry to be exceptionally reliable with little to no downtime, which is just one of the reasons why we keep ordering more.

"Moving forwards, we intend to maintain the momentum with plans in place to expand the group throughout the UK as we aspire to increase our depot footprint further.

"New plant will be an essential element of this plan and we envisage capital expenditure for the group will increase by 30% to £45 million (€57 million). In fact, we are just about to place a series of orders for another 1000 machines."