The sad milestone in the history of Grove Cranes in Sunderland

The final remnants of Grove Cranes were sold off to the highest bidder in an auction which attracted dozens of people.

The end was on the horizon

But the March 1999 auction was merely another milestone in a business which had been hit by devastating news in 1998.

That’s when workers at Grove Cranes, where 670 people worked at the time, were told that it would be ceasing production.

Grove Europe blamed ‘severe financial losses’, but many workers waved angrily-worded placards as they left work.

2,500 lots up for auction

Then, in the following March in 1999, an auction of 2,500 lots of machinery and equipment went up for sale.

Peter Davidson, who was the AEEU convenor at Grove, was interviewed at the time and described the auction as a very sad occasion for people who worked there.

“It means no going back, ” he said back in 1999. “It is heartbreaking to see this taking place.”

Decades of Wearside history

Grove, Coles and Steels were all names which were synonymous with crane-making on Wearside for many decades.

Coles Cranes was born in 1939 and the Egis shipyard at Pallion was bought and renamed Crown Works.

Most products came under the umbrella company of Steels Engineering Products in 1943, but the Coles product name was kept.

By 1970, the change of name to Coles Cranes happened.

Hundreds of lots up for grabs

In 1984, following the collapse of Acrow, a management team tried to take over the Sunderland operation but it went to American-owned Grove Europe instead.

The next few years brought job losses and job boosts, as the market fluctuated, but manufacturing continued until the shock closure announcement in November 1998.

By March 1999, a team from the London-based firm Henry Butcher came to the Crown Works with the aim of selling everything from welding sets to mobile cranes.

A close-knit community

The list of items included portable buildings, 250 lots of inspection and laboratory equipment, 50 lots of canteen equipment and 100 lots of power tools.

By 2015, the south bank of the river at Pallion had become a hive of activity, with demolition work almost complete on the former Grove Cranes site.

It would pave the way for more than 800 concrete piles that would support the approach to the Wear Crossing, which would connect Sunderland to the A19 and A1.

Share your memories if you worked at the factory in Sunderland by emailing [email protected]