WHEN Arthur Dawson paid £50 for a horse, her shoes and a cart to pull coal around the region, he could never have envisaged the strides his company would make from such humble beginnings. But AV Dawson is now in its 75th year, and one of the UK's leading distribution specialists over road, rail, land and sea. Deputy Business Editor Steven Hugill finds out about the success
IT is a real hive of activity. Dwarfed by a myriad of buildings and warehouses, forklifts are scurrying around carrying loads for waiting wagons.
Huge cranes, set against the distant hum of engineers working in fabrication sheds, swing gently across the Teesside skyline as they unload vessels on the quayside.
It feels like a community within a community.
For some motorists, AV Dawson may only conjure up memories of the company’s livery emblazoned on one of its wagons as it travels on the motorway.
But walk around its vast distribution centre – Riverside Park – on the banks of the River Tees, and it is only then you can appreciate the magnitude and size of what it does.
Founded in 1938 with the princely sum of £50 by Arthur “Vernie” Dawson and Dina, a coal-carrying cart horse, AV Dawson is now in its 75th year.
Nestled next to the River Tees, the third-generation family firm offers haulage, shipping, warehouse and rail services, with deeplyentrenched roots in North- East production arms of steel and fertiliser.
But these traditional services do not mean the company is standing still; it is constantly evolving.
The firm launched a £10m investment programme, complete with a £2.5m Tees Riverside Intermodal Park (Trip) rail terminal linking to the East Coast Main Line, which can handle trains carrying up to 80 containers and store up to 1,200 loaded containers.
Electrician Ronnie Johnson installs a common alarm in a substation destined for an oil refinery in Grangemouth.
It gained accreditation to transport goods through the Channel tunnel, and is carrying out work on a £3.2m deep water quay to increase water depths from four metres to eight metres, and lengthening its quayside by 150 metres to attract larger ships.
It has also invested millions in two new harbour cranes, which have a lifting capacity of up to 100 tonnes to help access bigger deliveries.
This growth has already borne fruit after the firm lined up a vessel to deliver 11,000 tonnes of coke for Redcarbased steelmaker SSI, which will be the biggest ship it has welcomed.
Gary Dawson, AV Dawson managing director, says the company, which employs about 160 people, has manoeuvred itself into a good position, but he wants to see it grow further into the offshore oil and gas, wind and subsea energy industries.
An accommodation module inside the fabrication hall
He said: “The business is 75 years old and we have done more investment in the last ten years than the previous 65.
“Our roots have been in the traditional industries on Teesside, they have got us to where we are, but we are looking to become more and more niche and specialist to get into different areas.”
The firm has fabrication sheds where various North-East engineering firms, including MTE and Hertel, have carried out work on accommodation modules for the offshore energy industry, and at times, there are about 500 workers on site from different companies.
Mr Dawson said: “We have always tried to be more than just a landlord and, while it sounds a bit of a cliche, be a one-stop shop for companies, creating a community of businesses on the site.
“We want people on site who can work with those who are already here.
“We have no illusions of becoming a manufacturer, our relationship is purely with those in that chain, and that is fine by us.
A view from a crane of the huge fabrication hall on AV Dawson’s site.
“We like the diversity of what we have here and, bit by bit, we hope to extend it into energy markets such as wind, oil and gas and nuclear.
“We are confident the Trip investment and the quayside work will help that.”
Mr Dawson says the firm oversees deliveries of supplies from Tata for Sunderland’s Nissan plant and thousands of tonnes of wheat every year to the Ensus ethanol plant in Wilton, near Redcar, which this week mothballed the site blaming a poor harvest and rising energy costs.
He said the firm had remained strong, even through the depths of the recession, which has stood it in good stead for the future.
He said: “We are still seeing peaks and demands in industry, people are running short deliberately and having to order heavily to fill up again when the demand is there.
A ship is loaded with line pipes, which will be used to transport natural gas
“And it is a different story for every part of our business.
“The automotive steel arm is pretty buoyant, companies such as Nissan are doing great things and Tata’s volumes are staying pretty positive.
“But the agricultural side is in a bit of turmoil because of the weather and last year’s bad harvest.
“If there are no crops to fertilise, the ships don’t come in, but it will come back because it is such a unique situation they are facing at present.
“The energy market is still very young and there are a number of business that are appearing to address the renewable energy sector.
“It is very much a risk and reward business at the moment, some parts are unstable and some are copperbottomed.”
Pilot technician Chris Stuart adjusts a camera from a quantum remoteoperated vehicle from Modus seabed intervention.
Mr Dawson says a key facet of the company’s successes stems from its family links.
He said: “The advantage we have with that in our make-up is that we are in a position to take decisions quickly; the buck stops here.
“In the past, family businesses may have been overlooked in favour of inward investors who have come and gone, taken the subsidiaries and left.
“But in the past few years, we have seen there is an amount of strengthened, longestablished indigenous companies that are robust enough to get through a recession and continue employing people.
“Family businesses have a lot to offer, we can make promises we know we can keep and that gives people comfort.
“We have a long-term vision and don’t believe anyone has done the work we are carrying out on this end of the river at the quayside in the last 30 years.
Inside the fabrication hall with welders in action.
“It is a long-term investment. You can buy a crane or a truck and if the job goes pear-shaped you can sell it, but you can’t put a £3m scheme on Ebay, and we firmly believe it will produce huge benefits for the company.”
Those benefits should also be reflected in AV Dawson’s other group companies, which include blast cleaning arm Tees Valley Castings, and Tees Valley Trailers, with a fleet of about 250 trailers for sale or hire.
Mr Dawson said: “There is a strong management team here, everyone had to take a lot on board during the growth phase, and take the pain of reduced hours. We expect to be profitable, but we are not a company obsessed by turnover.
“We had to let very few people go during the recession and they deserve a lot of credit and the rewards that come their way.
“We want to have a very niche operation and it is all about maximising the business through the facilities that we have got.”
Metal structures awaiting transportation to an offshore rig
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