A UK-first has been achieved by a Baildon-based company as part of a major investment drive.

Chris Wright Road Planing has invested around £250,000 in its fourth piece of specialised kit in 12 months. The latest buy, a German-built cold milling machine - known as a road planer - is the first of its kind in the country.

It incorporates 1.2m wide drum which can remove tarmac at a depth of 330mm in a single pass.

The new machine, which will go to work on Monday on contracts for Leeds City Council, enables work to be completed more quickly and with less disruption. It also has lower emissions than any other machine of a similar size, reducing the environmental impact .

The road planing division has invested around £600,000 in new kit which, along with continued investment by the sister haulage business Chris Wright (Baildon) Ltd, takes recent group investment to around £1 million.

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Jez Wright, managing director, said: "This is the fourth new machine we have bought in the last 12 months, taking our road planer fleet to 22 machines, which is the largest in the North of England. We also run ancillary equipment such as tipper lorries, road sweepers and low loaders.

"Our clients are surfacing contractors and local authorities and we work across the north from Liverpool to Grimsby and Leicester to Newcastle. Our highly experienced operators ensure we can offer a complete road planing and surface removal service from footway repairs and carriageway patching to full highway reconstruction. "

The haulage business,which has around 40 staff, is headed by John Morton and provides a range of specialised haulage and installation services. Regular clients include Airedale Air Conditioning which is building a new factory at Rawdon to replace its fire-damaged premises, Ilkley-based industrial ovens maker Spooner and Bradford-based Switchgear & Instrumentation .

For these and other customers Wright not only transports goods but also provides equipment installation and removal services .

Mr Morton said the company was investing around £250,000 in two new trucks this year and its fleet of around 80 vehicles ranged from small wagons to articulated lorries and trailer capable of carrying up to 90 tonnes in weight. The haulage division has also added a 2,000 sq ft storage base in Baildon and has plans for a new trailer store near its Baildon base.

The combined turnover of the Chris Wright Group is now more than £5 million and it has approaching 100 employees having recently recruited a number of drivers

Mr Morton said: "We offer a range of specialised services which differentiates us from many of our competitors and this diversity has enabled us to keep progressing, even through the recent recession."