The Decline and Fall of Coles

Amalgamation of Sales Design and Manufacturing took place and the Overseas Distributor Network was rationalised. Manufacture continued at the UK Plants under the Grove Coles banner and new models were introduced into the Market but over a number of years the Coles brand name gradually disappeared and the UK Plants were shut down.

The Grove Coles name lasted for about three to four years until about 1990 when they dropped the Coles and it then became Grove Cranes Ltd. During this period all the Coles models were phased out of production. They also decided not to produce any more truck cranes in Europe and went into full production with All Terrain cranes.

Grove in America still produce there version of the Husky which is the Rough Terrain model "RT" range even today.

In 1995 Grove purchased the crane division from Krupp Industries Ltd a German company, this was a simple option which was to purchase an upto date technologies crane without having to design there own. .
This decision was what led to the demise of the original Coles factory in 1998. The Krupp crane had its own factory in Wilhelmshaven Germany and it was decided that Grove Europe Ltd did not require two factories in Europe and decided to shut Sunderland and keep the
Krupp factory as this factory had the latest technology for building cranes.

Since 1984 the Grove company has been bought and sold about three or four times.
In 2002 Grove, with manufacturing facilities in the USA and Germany and an office in Sunderland, was acquired by North American crane maker Manitowoc. By then Coles, whose yellow cranes were the best known in the world thirty and forty years ago, was little more than a distant memory though its machines still crop up in many corners of the world and Grove still makes spares for them.

Coles having been at one time the Largest Mobile Crane Manufacturer in the World ceased to exist and it is sadly no longer possible to buy a UK built mobile crane.

A an announcement on the BBC News of Monday 10th Aug. 1998 marked the final chapter of the Coles story

" Crane firm axes 670 jobs. A crane factory in Sunderland is to close with the loss of 670 jobs.

Grove Europe Ltd, which took over the former Coles Cranes plant on Wearside from the receivers in 1984, has announced it is shutting down.

Staff will be laid off from November onwards and the factory will close completely by the end of the year. Davey Hall, spokesman for the AEEU union, said: "It's a bitter and brutal blow to the manufacturing industry in the North East."

Thanks to Peter Cooper, Brian Reynolds, Peter Allison