SPA Power Machinery Director, Laurie Anthony, poses with the famed Petrol Post Driver and a selection of Westermann products. EASY DOES IT
Family companies have the best stories to tell, and SPA Power Machinery is a close as any. Possibly even more harmonious, with mum, dad and offspring running the show. We went to meet them.
I
f the name doesn’t ring a bell, SPA Power Machinery is both the sister company of
SPA Landscaping – a commercial grounds maintenance contractor of over 40 years standing – and it is perhaps even better known for the ‘Easy Petrol Post Driver’, which is a familiar brand from many Executive Hire Shows.
The initials belong to founders Simon and Pamela Anthony, who started the landscaping business in 1981, later coming across the famous (and highly effective)
Petrol Post Driver in 2012, which then became the basis of the power machinery offshoot. The rest is history still developing, with siblings Alex and Laurie now in charge of both divisions – with plentiful input from the folks ongoing, of course.
It’s Laurie who undertakes the interview. A Physics MA, she has nevertheless been in and around the family business since childhood, eventually joining the business ten years ago. We’ll get to all of that shortly, but first I wanted the full story of the Post Driver. It’s made in Australia by Christie Engineering, so how did it find its way into the UK?
Westermann ride-ons.
“Basically, there was a need in the landscaping business. We were regularly getting large planting jobs, and many of the specifications required a stake driving in with the planted tree. My father said there had to be a better way of doing this than by hand. So they started looking online and came
across a YouTube video of Peter Christie presenting his prototype. We bought two and took them to the APF show in 2012, then we bought ten more and started marketing it throughout Europe,” Laurie explains.
It’s quite a leap from being landscape contractors to marketing machinery. Did this present any challenges?
“Ten years ago we knew absolutely nothing about bringing a product to market. However, Google was our friend – we set up a website, went to all the exhibitions, put ads in newspapers and the farming press, made a few videos and eventually the phones started ringing.”
How did the Post Driver develop from that point?
“The original prototype was only designed for a two-inch round stakes – perfect for tree planting, but for farming and larger jobs it
28 Executive Hire News - October 2022
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44
