WE’RE ON THE MOVE & EXPANDING!

Apologies for the lack of updates during the summer. It’s been a bit hectic to say the least, not only with the hire business but we’ve also been busy planning our expansion….

In September a huge brand new marina was opened in our home village of Willington, Derbyshire. Mercia Marina is now one of the biggest inland waterway marinas in the country with a staggering 585 berths.

Since the spring we’ve been in discussions with the Marina management to move into the brand new workshop on the site and to move our hire boats down to the site too. Our expansion into the workshop will enable us to provide a full engineering and repair service to both internal and external boat owners. The workshop also provides us with a professional base from which to offer a warm welcome our hire boat guests and enables us to fitout both our own hire boats as well as offering a bespoke boat build service.
The workshop whilst in build – it’s been a wet summer!

We’ve already recruited a superb Marine Engineer and a talented Joiner/Cabinet Maker both of whom will be starting work with us shortly. We hope to be in the workshops by the beginning of November and are currently in the process of investing £………well, quite a few quid in brand new woodworking and engineering machinery.

A bit drier and nearing completion. The red pipework is to empty and fill the dry dock – the concrete area next to the workshop. The dry dock will have a building surrounding it within the next few weeks. This will be run by the marina independently.

We’re also pleased to announce that we are the first inland waterways business to be supported by the East Midlands NTI who have awarded us their maximum grant of £10,000 towards the cost of our machinery purchases. Which as you can imagine we’re absolutely thrilled about! So a big thanks to them without their support our expansion would have proved difficult.

We’ll be straight in at the deep end (no pun intended!) as soon as we open as we’ve a brand new narrowboat shell being delivered from Colecraft in mid November…no pressure there then! Once complete in spring this will go into our hire fleet for the 2009 season.

The workshop entrance – plenty of hardstanding for a narrowboat if necessary!

So hopefully you’ll understand my lack of updates until now, but i do intend to keep you all informed of our progress with moving into the workshops. We’ll also be having an open day some time in November…..blimey another thing to add to our ‘To Do’ list….So if you’re about pop in for a cuppa and a chat! Date to follow..
Justin & Team