Re-emergence of HCL Mk II will be salt to wounds of creditors.
Given the demolition industry’s seemingly insatiable appetite for equipment, fuel and personnel, there is every likelihood that the recent collapse of HCL Equipment Contracts will have had a devastating – and possibly terminal – impact upon a whole host of suppliers. Indeed, we have already received one anonymous (and as yet unsubstantiated) tip-off that a plant hire company was into HCL for more than £50k when the Derbyshire-based company joined the industry dead pool.
So today’s news that the family behind HCL (and, previously, behind Wrekin Construction) have risen Christ-like from the grave will be like so much salt into an open and festering wound.
Of course, the stigma of a failed business venture should not mean that anyone should be excommunicated from that industry sector for all eternity. But to re-emerge with such haste seems both crass and callous.
HCL is not unique, of course. Just about every demolition company of any significance that has bitten the big one in recent years has managed to re-emerge in a Mk II, son of, from the makers of form or another. In addition, while all this is going on, a good few demolition companies will have been left out of pocket after a main contractor or client has gone pop.
The fact that this sword cuts both ways does not detract from the fact that a change of company name and a reshuffle of the directorial deck effectively wipes the slate clean, leaving failed businesses and livelihoods in their wake. Nor does it disguise the fact that one failure does not preclude the culprits from repeating the exercise.
We hope the team behind this latest resurrection sleep well tonight.
