Cobalt Plant Hire invests in fleet of new JCB machines worth £4m

A plant hire firm has invested in a fleet of new JCB machines worth £4 million, including 19 X Series excavators.

Kent-based Cobalt Plant Hire was founded in 2022 with support from JCB Finance. Its fleet of JCB machines has just been joined by new JCB 140X and 220X models.

Supplied by dealer Greenshields JCB, the X Series models are joined by JCB 85Z-2 and 86C-2 midi excavators and six and nine-tonne JCB site dumpers. It takes Cobalt Plant Hire’s extensive JCB fleet up to 55 machines, all with striking dark blue livery.

Cobalt Plant Hire Joint Managing Director, Barry Verrent says the JCB X Series excavators are proving a big hit with hire customers, with former users of competitor machines now becoming big fans of the X Series models.

Barry: We choose JCB as it’s a great British brand and we have an excellent relationship with the team at Greenshields JCB. The service has been really good and we really like the X Series. It’s a powerful excavator. Operator comfort is a big thing for us and so the comfort levels in the cab stand out. As long as the operator is happy, we’re happy. The customer feedback has been very good. Even those customers who previously used competitor machines are now converted to the X Series.

The team at Greenshields JCB has been very supportive of us – from the very early days of Cobalt when we were starting out with nothing. JCB was the one manufacturer and dealer combination that backed us, fighting to secure finance for us too. They’ve been behind us all the way and are a big part of why we’ve stuck with JCB.

Cobalt Plant Hire was established in 2022 by Barry Verrent and Mick Lippard and employs ten people at its Rochester base. Offering self-drive plant hire, the company operates a fleet of 190 machines including 35 JCB tracked excavators, ten JCB dumpers, six JCB Loadall telescopic handlers and four JCB compaction rollers.