Dundee lifts business looks to hit new heights with £1 million HQ investment

46-year-old family run firm sees expansion as key to achieving £6m revenue goal.

The brothers who run Caltech Lifts have unlocked the next phase of the company’s ambitious growth plans after buying a new HQ building in Dundee for £1 million.

The family business, which was established in 1978 by Howard Renwick and has been run since 2013 by two of his sons - Andrew and Fraser - is one of the country’s top suppliers and maintainers of lifting equipment, including passenger lifts, goods lifts, disabled access lifts and stairlifts to the public and private sectors. It currently maintains more than 1,500 lifts across the UK.

While the firm aims to grow its turnover by some 50 per cent to £6m it has been constrained by the size of its base at the Port of Dundee, necessitating the use of shipping containers in its car park to store equipment and parts. Administration staff have also been working across more than one office site and remotely.

Fraser (left) and Andrew Renwick have bought Affinity House to be the new home of Caltech Lifts. Picture: ASM Media & PR

The Renwick brothers now have that revenue goal and further growth in their sights after purchasing Affinity House in the city’s Dryburgh Industrial Estate for £1m from Affinity Business Centre via Calsum Property, a commercial property firm set up by Andrew and Fraser with two close business associates. The deal was financed with a commercial mortgage from Allica Bank via Breadalbane Finance alongside investment from Caltech and the other investors, who will help with the running and promotion of the business centre.

The site comprises a two-storey 2,000 square-metre centre, two warehouses totalling 666 square -metres, a store, a 40-space car park with seven electric vehicle (EV) charging points and a sizeable service yard with a five-kilowatt wind turbine. The business centre features 29 offices and its 15 tenants include firms from a range of sectors including homecare, subsea engineering, legal, communications networks and marketing.

The Renwicks and their business partners plan to continue to run Affinity House as a fully-let business centre - renting out office and storage space, including a hot-desking area. Caltech will use one of the warehouses as well as an open-plan office which features a meeting room and kitchen. The building also has a gym for tenants and staff. Caltech plans to move in by June.

Andrew Renwick, managing director, said: “This was always a hefty goal for us on our road to the future Caltech we envision - one we’ve been looking to achieve for the last eight years. We looked at several premises, but it had to be the perfect place for us. This move will allow us space to accommodate more staff, equipment and parts for increased orders as we grow from £4.2m turnover and six-figure profit in 2022-23 towards our £4.5m 2023-24 turnover target and on to our £6m growth aim.

The staff room at Affinity House. Picture: ASM Media & PR

“Our three-year goals are doubling our maintenance portfolio, further expanding our service south of the Border, opening an office in Glasgow to better support the team working there and increasing our ‘turnkey installations’ by 50 per cent - where we take on a principal contractor role and bring in our subcontractors associated with the complete all-trades work associated with lift installations.”

The firm, which employs some 30 staff, aims to set up a showroom for passenger lifts, platform lifts and stairlifts while it will also be able to host technical seminars for clients’ design teams as well as conduct apprenticeship training. Fully-let, the centre is projected to yield tenant rental income of £372,000 a year, including from the units Caltech uses. That will be supplemented by a plan to rent out self-storage containers in the service yard and the warehouse and store that Caltech won’t be using. The new owners predict that could increase annual rental income to £420,000.

Renwick added: “Our customers will benefit from: being able to come and see our product offerings; the bigger warehouse allowing more parts to be held in stock - so enabling quicker repairs; more efficient back office support to our field engineers as we look to add to our admin and operations team - which will make things more slick and streamlined and better prices from manufacturers as the volume of our sales increases.

“Part of our growth strategy is long-term investment, so this continues that. We always aimed to be ‘live-in landlords’ as it makes sense for the business and we’re confident we’ll be good at it. Importantly, the wellbeing of our staff when in the office will improve thanks to the great staff rooms, brand new kitchens, shower facilities, meeting rooms, barbecue area we plan to create and the gym. This building has lots of great things which make it a really positive working environment. We’re relishing the prospect of the new heights we can achieve for the company, its customers and staff after we move in.”

Meanwhile, FOR:EV, the Edinburgh-headquartered provider of electric vehicle charging infrastructure, is rolling out its rapid charging stations at four further retail locations across Scotland. The four sites – at Sainsbury’s Inverkip in Inverclyde, Toolstation Montrose, Tesco Express on Great Northern Road, Aberdeen and South Harbour Road retail park in Fraserburgh – are run by Cedarwood Asset Management and David Samuel Asset Management.

Calum Wallace, FOR:EV’s business development manager, said: “Part of our mission is to provide reliable, user-friendly EV charging infrastructure across the length and breadth of Scotland. These four new hubs will bring our EV charging provision to more locations in the North-east, and to Inverclyde for the first time.”

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