Market leader in the online equipment rental space, iSeekplant.com.au has attracted Seven Group Holdings to acquire a 25 per cent stake in the company through a strategic investment believed to be over $2 million.
Seven Group Holdings chief executive and managing director, Ryan Stokes said iSeekplant is driving innovation, efficiency and productivity in this important sector, using technology to help improve efficiency and relationships between the various players.
“iSeekplant is facilitating more options and solution in plant and equipment between owners and users, which is helping enhance competitiveness”, he remarked.
Sally McPherson, CEO and co-founder of the site, said, “Following our strong growth over the last year with the signing of major contractors to our platform, we can take the business forward quickly with the addition of SGH as a cornerstone investor.”
iSeekplant was created in Queensland in 2012 when friends and colleagues Matt Peters, Shaun Whittred and siblings Drew and Sally McPherson combined their skills in construction, mining, development and technology marketing.
How is iSeekplant doing so far?
It is now Australia’s largest online database connecting major contractors and plant and equipment hire businesses. There are now about 3,400 large and small equipment hire companies across Australia now using its plant procurement platform.
Up to 40,000 companies and individuals are searching the site each week for plant and equipment to hire for projects spanning residential construction, civil, agriculture, roads and infrastructure and mining.
In addition, a range of well-known top-tier contractors, including CPB Contractors, Clough, Downer EDI, BMD Constructions, John Holland, Laing O’Rourke, Acciona, Chevron, UGL and Rio Tinto are now using the iSeekpant.com.au platform.
All of the Tier 1 and Tier 2 accredited main roads civil contractors in Australia have used iSeekplant in the past 12 months, some up to four or five times per week.
Sally said that through their cloud-based platform, they are facilitating high quality matches between contractors and suppliers, providing information on 65,000 machines according to the equipment type, location and availability in both remote and city areas.
“Over the last year, 2,700 contracting businesses have used our easy to use public site to find equipment, with close to 500 new plant and equipment hire companies registering for the service in the first three months of calendar 2016”, she revealed.
