End of era for HNP as company move complete

HNP engineering’s 47 year occupancy of its Commercial Road site comes to an end on Monday when director Ian Walterson hands over the keys to the building to site owners Shetland Leasing And Property.

Mr Walterson himself has worked out of the building for over 20 years  – his first day was on 21st April 1996. The firm has now relocated to the Lower Blackhill Industrial Estate, a process that began in May.

He said that he had many memories of the building where “a lot had gone on in his time and a helluva lot more before that. I will certainly miss it.

He added: “I would like to thank you to all my staff for the huge efforts they have put into the relocation process. It has been a lot of work while still trying to perform our function as a business doing our day to day work at the same time.

“I would also like to say a huge thank you to all our customers for sticking with us and putting up with then disruption entailed with the relocation and having the business operating at two locations. So I am very grateful to our customers for that and sticking with us at the Lower Blackhill.”

ian-w
Ian Walterson in the empty HNP workshop. Photo: Peter Johnson

Mr Walterson reckoned the number of employees at HNP over the years probably reached three figures during his time and there had been many more before that and many apprentices had been trained.

Moving all the firm’s stores and heavy engineering equipment and buying and preparing the building at Lower Blackhill had been an “expensive business”, said Mr Walterson.

HNP received the keys for the new premises at the end of July. It was owned previously by West Side Transport, Ian Reid and then Streamline as a maintenance workshop for its mobile cranes.

COMMENTS(4)

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  • i tinkler

    • December 10th, 2016 17:37

    That is a real shame! If I am elected onto the Council I will certainly have an investigation of SCT Trustees links to the SIC Councillors, Company directors, PR companies and Viking Energy. Find out once and for all about vested interests, cronyism and conflicts of interest. Murky territory certainly, just too many of the usual suspects in this swampy pond..

    REPLY
  • paul barlow

    • December 12th, 2016 13:08

    Ian as you should be fully aware. If elected you will have no say what the charity trust does. Your say is even less relevant to a trust of a trust. As you know or should there will be no council members on the new sct board. So don’t promise stuff you cant deliver. It tends to annoy folks their representatives failing to follow through on promises.

    REPLY
    • Michael Garriock

      • December 12th, 2016 14:14

      Wholly incorrect Paul Barlow.

      Whether or not any Councillor(s) will become SCT trustee(s) after May is wholly down to the Council which is elected in May. As while the current incarnation of the SIC may well have decided to remove SIC participation, they cannot dictate to their post May incarnation what it can do, and the decision could easily be reversed after May.

      Furthermore, the SIC, whether directly involved with the SCT or not, their power and influence is such that they could quite easily force a regime change within the SCT. Which, arguably, short of organising public demonstrations, boycotts etc, would be the only democratic avenue through which the owners and benefactors of the SCT could realistically regain control and accountability of it again.

      Finally, I think you will find SLAP is a plc. wholly owned by the SCT and not “a trust of a trust”.

      REPLY
  • i tinkler

    • December 12th, 2016 13:49

    Paul Barlow, I can and most certainly will deliver here. Investigating and looking for sharp practice, conflicts of interest, et al. is my promise. I may be limited on what the SCT does in future, but its actions in the past most definitely need investigation! Every one of the former Trustee, Councillors and their assorted business links can and will be scrutinised and opened up to public view. That is my promise, do you have a problem with that? Did you, for that matter actually read and understand what I wrote above?

    REPLY

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