Interserve
 |
|
| Public limited company | |
| Traded as | : |
| Industry | Infrastructure - professional services, construction services, support services, construction equipment hire and sale |
| Predecessor | Tilbury Douglas plc Tilbury Group plc R M Douglas Holdings |
| Founded | 1884 |
| Headquarters | Reading, Berkshire, United Kingdom |
|
Area served
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Worldwide |
|
Key people
|
Glyn Barker, Chairman Adrian Ringrose, CEO |
| Products | Formwork Systems, Joinery products |
| Revenue | £3,204.6 million (2015) |
| £115.4 million (2015) | |
| £70.2 million (2015) | |
|
Number of employees
|
80,000 (2016) |
| Subsidiaries | see Operations |
| Website | www.interserve.com |
Interserve plc is a multinational support services and construction company based in the UK, with a revenue of £3.2 billion in 2015 and a workforce of more than 80,000 people worldwide. The company is headquartered in Reading, Berkshire and is listed on the .
Interserve traces its origins to 1884, when the London and Tilbury Lighterage Company Limited (LTLD) was formed to transfer goods by sailing barge to and from ships on the River Thames, London, England. A lighterage is the fee paid for the use of a Lighter, a large, open, flat bottomed barge, that could transport goods a short distance in shallow waters. At the time London was the busiest port in the world. Lightering provided a service much in demand in the overcrowded river because of the need to transship goods from ships berthed there and to convey them to the riverside wharves, where the larger open water cargo ships were unable to dock due to their size and draft or, to more efficiently and effectively deal with the number of ships congregating in the river. By 1887 the company is recorded as occupying premises of a former Lloyd's Register Proving House and Chain-Testing Shed and subsequent Police Station at Preston Road, West India Docks
In 1888 the company expanded into dredging, where mechanisation led to greatly improved productivity, and secured a contract with the Port of London (PLA) to remove dredged ballast. This new venture was complementary to the existing business, utilising the barges already owned by the company, together with their knowledge of the river and its tides. There was a further synergy between lightering and dredging; lightering was necessary where ports were shallow and the draft of a vessel needed to be reduced to facilitate their entry into port, whereas dredging increased the depth of river channels to enable vessels with a larger draft to berth into port. The company’s move into dredging therefore protected its commercial interest against the perceived threat to lightering. This can be seen vindicated by the decline in lighterage for dry bulk cargo after the middle of the 20th century, although the eventual decline in lighterage was caused by the adoption of road haulage as the main distribution method when London's docks moved downstream (away from what is now known as Docklands) and shipping adopted containerisation methods. However, for the time being lightering still thrived and the New Zealand based Ashburton Guardian reported in 1890 that the Company was an early pioneer in the transshipment of frozen meat. The newspaper noted that their capabilities for handling this cargo had been highlighted during a trip, organized for delegates at the International Congress on Inland Navigation, to inspect the company's custom built vessels complete with cold chambers that enabled the meat to arrive at Smithfield Market frozen.
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Wikipedia