The Penny Engineering Story
Past and Present
Hydraulic Services Ltd
John Penny Snr. left the Fleet Air Arm after having flown Swordfish over the Western Approaches looking for submarines. It would appear that in civilian life he would prove to be a difficult employee and with no formal training other than a licence to drive tanks and fly planes. He became a sales representative for Duckhams Oils, driving around in an old Rolls Royce and living above a pub in Newark. This was the 1950s - he was sacked from Duckhams and went to work for his main customer Dowty, who supplied roof supports to the coal mining industry.
He found the constraints of working for a large organisation difficult, especially when he could see better ways of doing things. In 1962 John started Hydraulic Services with one employee and a Ford Anglia van with a test rig on a trailer. This way he could visit coal mines and service roof supports, known as Duke props, without bringing them to the surface from underground. This saved 80% of the cost to the mine compared with the service from Dowty who wanted everything taking back to their workshops. The work was almost without limits as every mine in the UK had hundreds of these props.
The business quickly expanded, and he set up premises in his mother-in-law’s old cottage in Eckington, North Derbyshire. The company’s experience in servicing hydraulics was transferable to garage equipment and diversification was started by servicing anything from aircraft undercarriage legs to barber’s chairs. A leading customer was Epco trolley jacks. This is where the current Penny Engineering’s orange colour came from as Epco had a specific orange that every jack had to be sprayed. This was often the only colour in the spray booth, so everyone got Epco orange, and we still use it today, although the range of colours now includes black as well.
Our History
1960s
These were days of national strikes, three-day weeks, power cuts and cheap but reliable Japanese imports of manufactured goods. Not an easy time for UK industry but with the diverse spread of customers and promoting the new idea of planned maintenance rather than waiting for equipment to break down, expansion came, and the company expanded into the disused Methodist chapel next door to where
John and family lived and incidentally where he was married.
1970s
Penny Hydraulics Ltd, incorporated in 1978
Hydraulic Services was now servicing 1000 trolley jacks a week alongside other service work and growing all the time. It was a lot for one person to run and following much deliberation John Penny Snr sold Hydraulic Services and quickly fell out with the new owners, Body Industries. After a brief interlude selling UK mining equipment in India, John set up a new hydraulics company doing what he liked best, servicing mining roof supports. This was now Penny Hydraulics Limited.
The continuing decline in coal mining was a worry and also an opportunity because larger companies were reducing their service and manufacturing capacity. Penny Hydraulics became the approved service centre for Dowty in the UK and took over the manufacture of their range of Duke Prop roof supports.
1980s
Introducing Penny SwingLift Cranes
John Penny never saw working for the mining industry as a long-term proposition due to the transitory nature of mining. The company was too reliant on one sector so when a friend, Gilbert Simm, MD of Tirfor, said that he had seen something that would be a great idea to develop he immediately looked into it. This idea stemmed from seeing a homemade crane that someone had built to load a welding set into a van. John Penny Junior joined the family business in 1980 from his job as a mechanical engineer with the National Coal Board to build a prototype crane and subsequently a marketable product.
Penny Hydraulics already had a longstanding relationship with Lucas Service UK repairing hydraulic garage equipment collected from their depots around the country. This would prove to be an ideal partnership marketing a range of small cranes for vans. They already had the infrastructure in place and many prospective customers visiting their depots. Lucas Special Products was established in 1981 purely to market Penny Hydraulics’ products and very successfully built the business particularly with major companies such as National Tyres and British Telecom.
The SwingLift crane name was established as the market leader and the range grew rapidly. The problem-solving reputation grew, and unusual jobs came through the door, probably because no-one else would do it! These included the mechanisms for the largest mobile TV screens and a crane to install the glazing in the British Museum atrium. John Penny Jnr, like his father, liked nothing more than being told that you can’t do that and then just doing it. Very often these jobs were interesting but did not make any money, however, occasionally they did and further product ranges evolved.
CellarLift and Goods Lifts
Bass Brewers’ experience using SwingLift cranes drew them to ask if Penny could design a means of getting kegs and cases in and out of pub cellars. This was 1989 and Robin Penny, also ex National Coal Board, joined the family firm to develop the CellarLift range of beer delivery hoists. Within five years every major brewer and pub company had a CellarLift and evolution came in the full range of goods lifts that are now a third of company turnover.
1990s
Introducing Penny Servicing and Maintenance
It was recognised that Penny Hydraulics was unusual in that they could design, manufacture and service any product made by them. This brought with it the ability to have unrivalled lead-times, quality and first time fix rates as everything was in house. A Service Department was set up by Tim Penny, the youngest son of John Penny Senior, and its success has led to it become the largest department in the company.
2000s
Penny Nuclear
Sellafield, as part of a scheme to involve smaller companies in decommissioning work, asked us to design a system to dig sludge out of an underground storage lagoon via a large manhole.
A Hallam University post-graduate student and John Penny Jnr took on the challenge and quickly put together, using computer aided design for the first time, a combination of a CellarLift and a SwingLift. The design was signed off, built and put to use quicker and cheaper by a factor of 10, than any previous solution of this kind for Sellafield. This was the start of Penny Hydraulics’ diversification into nuclear decommissioning to offset the demise of the mining work. In 2013 there were still 13 million tonnes of coal being mined in the UK and mining still accounted for the greater part of the company turnover. In December 2015 the last deep mine closed, Kellingley Colliery, so the rapid re-orientation of the business was urgent.
Chandelier Winching Systems
A policy of diversification led to the purchase of Raising and Lowering Systems Ltd from its retiring owner in 2015. The nephew of John Penny Jnr, Ed Penny, joined the company as General Manager of the Raising and Lowering Division. This is largely for the design and supply of bespoke winch systems to raise and lower chandeliers, artwork or hard to reach commercial lighting units. Customers include the Royal Academy of Art, the Savoy, royal palaces around the world, Guinness breweries and Network Rail.
2020s
Sidetracker Acquisition
The takeover of a specialist forklift truck manufacturer, Sidetracker Engineering, was completed early in 2022. The acquisition was partly because Penny needed the extra manufacturing capacity and partly that it further diversified the business. The previous owner has stayed on as General Manager of Sidetracker. The trucks are designed for carrying long loads such as timber, pipes or steel down narrow aisles and have the ability to track in any direction. This enables warehouses to maximise their floor space.
The Awarding of the Royal Warrant of Appointment
The proudest moment for Penny Hydraulics came in March 2022 when it was awarded the Royal Warrant of Appointment as Lifting Equipment Manufacturers and Engineers to Her Majesty The Queen. This honour has now been extended by His Majesty The King to Penny Engineering.
The company’s philosophies of maintaining a diverse product portfolio, doing what no-one else wants to do, doing things differently and being innovative was being recognised more widely. Being a royal warrant holder also demands year on year improvements in all aspects of sustainability, an avenue that Penny started down in earnest in around 2010 and was a key driver in the decision to form an employee owned company in 2025. The move has safeguarded the long-term future of the business and its philosophies. This type of commitment requires the best staff at all levels in all departments and means forging links with the best training providers and having a challenging but supportive environment.
The Name Change...to Penny Engineering Ltd
It was after explaining to many new customers that we were not “just a hydraulics company”, but could provide all manner of engineering services, that the company decided that a name change to Penny Engineering would better reflect its capabilities. This was completed in mid 2024.
The Transition...to an Employee Owned Trust Company
The sons of the founder, John Penny Senior, had seen themselves as custodians of the company and believed that a company should be run for the benefit of those that worked in it.
The Board were challenged by their previous Chairman Sir David Walker, to have a succession plan in place as timescales for bringing a plan to fruition could be lengthy. Following in depth and protracted discussions with the Senior Leadership Team, external advisors and other companies, a set of Core Values were drawn up that were the reasons why the company was in business and then set about working out how best to maintain these for years to come. Putting 100% of the shares into an employee ownership trust became a clear way forward to safeguard the core values and ownership of the business for generations. The Board maintain day to day autonomy of all aspects of the business, but the ownership is via a trust company with representatives from the wider workforce as trustees.
The Future, Sustainability and Net Zero
There is no doubt that how business is transacted, products made, sold and ultimately disposed of are changing. The company is committed to being at the forefront of these changes and to become carbon neutral by 2050. It has already reduced emissions by 50% but it is now time to start working more closely with customers and suppliers to take this further.
The circular economy will soon be the norm. We expect that a customer will buy a crane for life and have it serviced, refurbished and moved if necessary, saving cost and carbon. This is possible now with our products but requires customer education and changes to our own infrastructure to become mainstream.
A modular design of a Sidetracker forklift is underway that will give more flexibility in manufacturing with improved lead times. The new drives and controls will be 25% more efficient and have autonomous capability. This type of product development for automation and with real time operational status available in the cloud will be an expected minimum in the next five years.