This month marked the 60th birthday of Darren Carter, Managing Director of MAP.

We celebrated in proper MAP style with cake, balloons and a lot of raking through old memories – after all, Darren has been with MAP pretty much since the start!

Darren joined MAP – formerly part of Anderson – 33 years ago and is one of its longest-serving employees.

He said: “We have come a long way since I first joined Anderson in 1991 as a Hire Manager when we literally owned a couple of diggers and dumpers and a roller and there were about 10 of us in the office.

“In 1998, we bought the depot in Barking, and we opened in 2000 as a separate business when I was made Director.

“Back then we dealt with both with external customers and with Anderson sites but as Anderson grew and we moved into development, we recognised that concentrating on the group construction and development work was going to be a way for us to expand the business further as one operation.

“Thirteen years after opening the Barking depot, we moved to a new purpose-built premises in Grays and the plant hire company was brought back in house.

“In 2021 I became Managing Director of MAP Plant with my focus now back on the hire business and our great team at Grays who always go above and beyond.”

In 2023 MAP and MACL Construction Business were grouped into the Hard Hat Construction Group Ltd with 100% of the issued share capital in this business sold to an Employee Ownership Trust (Trustee Company).