MERCHANT FOCUS: HARLOW BROS
OWNERSHIP GOALS
Employee Ownership Trusts are growing in popularity. Fiona Russell Horne met one East Midlands business that restructured this way.
O
ne of the fastest growing business formats is Employee Ownership Trusts, a path that East Midlands timber and builders merchant
Harlow Bros followed four years ago. Harlow Bros was set up by brothers Reg & Vernon, just shy of 100 years ago, making munitions boxes and chicken sheds in a field left to them by their mother. The head office is still there, on Hathern Road in Long Whatton,
near Loughborough. It grew and expanded into other timber products, such as ladders and poultry sheds, and now encompasses engineered timber products such as roof trusses, engineered floors and engineered joists, as well as the manufacture of stables and farm buildings. Plus, there’s a timber merchant business with seven branches.
Group managing director Neil Sabey believes it’s the different facets of the business that
Harlow Timber Group’s new Nottingham branch was officially opened in March by Nottingham Forest football legend Des Walker, right, Neil Sabey, Harlow Timber Group managing director, and John Newcomb, BMF CEO.
have made Harlow Bros so resilient. “If one area was finding business a challenge, chances are that there was another that was finding things much better. Certainly, for many years the poultry sheds were the backbone. Out in the countryside, planners quite like them because they are timber. As well as chickens, our buildings have been used to house everything from a local farm shop to a classic car collection. “We are a timber merchant, but our divisions and our experience mean that we are also real specialists,” Sabey explains. “We see ourselves very much as a solutions provider. Customers might go to a standard generalist merchant to buy their joists, if they come to us, we are able to have the conversations around what the project is, what they are planning, what
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www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net April 2025
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