Autumn 202140th Anniversary for Hovington

Rochdale civil engineering company Hovington is celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2021.

Established in 1981, Hovington has evolved into a specialist groundwork, highways, remediation, utilities and drainage contractor working across a number of sectors including retail, industrial, commercial, public sector and student accommodation.

Clients have included IKEA, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, John Lewis, Airbus, Safestore, Universal Container Services and Lidl.

Earlier this year, John Maloney Jr and Martin Quinn exited the business and John’s son, Jack Maloney, became the financial director, with Mike Penny appointed as the construction director, and Nick Green assuming the role of managing director.

Jack Maloney, who is the third generation of his family to work for Hovington, said: “Hovington has been in my blood all my life. I remember coming in from the age of five or six helping my Dad around the office.

“Martin and Dad decided that in the year of our 40th anniversary now was the right time for them to step away. They’ve built the foundations and values of today’s business and I’d love nothing more than to add another 40 years to the Hovington legacy and hand it on to the next generation."

Managing director Nick Green described Hovington as one of “the North West’s best-kept secrets.” He said: “Ironically, you don’t see a lot of what we do because a lot of our work tends to be buried. IKEA in Sheffield is a good example of the type of projects we undertake. It’s a very imposing building but our job was to take a former foundry site and get the land ready for an IKEA to be built on. It was worth £4m to us."

The company has been involved in string of projects including the groundwork for the retail and leisure destination Rochdale Riverside (see photo below), the infrastructure for the newly refurbished JunctionNINE Retail Park in Warrington, the car park and external works for Hopwood Hall College in Rochdale, the IKEA store in Ashton, works at Oldham College and creating the structure that Manchester’s famous archway in Chinatown is built on.

The company is also working with Willmott Dixon on the second phase of Rochdale Riverside, which includes plans to build 220 apartments and a new hotel.