It all started back in 1982, with Gav and Blue (B & G)
With a fair bit of contracting knowledge under their belts they set up BG Contracting with the princely capital sum of $20 each. It was all they had left from their last Christmas holiday pay. They weren’t too flash on the machinery side either. Gav owned an XA Falcon car with a tow bar, and that was it. To that meagre inventory they added a tandem-axle trailer, shovels and a wheelbarrow, and they were in business. Within a year of forming the company, the pair bought their first major item of plant, a Massey Ferguson 50 tractor with a back-hoe, for $10,000. Soon they added a Massey Ferguson 40 with a front-end loader.
For the next 10 years they continued on a relatively small scale with just themselves and a couple of employees. By then they’d established their credentials across a range of civil construction services. This idea that anyone can build up their knowledge and work their way through the ranks is what drives us. We invest heavily in upskilling and giving our team good opportunities for advancement.
They gave the reins to Jonas and Stephan.
In 2012, Blue and Gav handed the keys to Stephan Rattray and Jonas Paterson.
Jonas joined BGCL with 15 years experience in operational management. He’s had a working relationship with BG since 2008 and became a director and shareholder in 2012. He is largely focused on developing future opportunities for the company.
Stephan has a long association with civil construction in Canterbury and had been a consultant for BG for two decades before joining. He’s a registered surveyor and experienced project manager who is dedicated to upholding BGCL's reputation of delivering quality workmanship on time and on budget.
BGCL, from our Silverstream base in Kaiapoi, now has an annual turnover of between $15 - $20 million, employs over 60 staff and operates 120 items of plant, much of it John Deere machinery and the rest Hitachi. The machinery inventory includes 14 excavators, two bulldozers, 10 loaders, five big rollers, two graders, five dump trucks, 10 other trucks ranging from water carriers to six-wheelers, and 35 runabouts.
