Seven Group Holdings invests in five-year-old startup

Seven Group Holdings has acquired, through a strategic investment, a 25 per cent stake in iSeekplant.com.au, one of the market leaders in the online equipment rental space.

The five-year-old startup operates through a Cloud-based platform and now employs 25 people.

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.

“It is facilitating more options and solution in plant and equipment between owners and users, which is helping enhance competitiveness”, he said.

Townsville native, 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.”

There are now about 3400 large and small equipment hire companies across Australia 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 iSeeklpant.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.

McPherson said, “We 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, 2700 contracting businesses have used our 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 works alongside co-founders (and brother) Drew McPherson, a former civil engineer, and Matt Peters, a development and technology specialist, in the operation of the business.