Vanaways Announces Partnership with UK-Wide Bodyshop Network

Above: Liam Nicholas of Vanaways, left, with Anthony Heard of Artura Consultancy

Pioneering vehicles broker Vanaways has announced a partnership with a UK-wide network of bodyshops, in a bid to give fleet owners a rapid solution for getting vehicles back on the road.

The Bristol-based business has signed an exclusive deal to work with Essex-based Artura Consultancy, which manages a network of 130 bodyshops around the country.

Artura bodyshops, which include 35 under their direct control through the Evolution Repair Group, will agree to prioritise work sent their way by Vanaways customers.

Artura will in turn promote Vanaways as a vehicles provider to its owner customers while providing its network with a regular stream of work from businesses keen to minimise the expense of replacement hire costs.

The new agreement is the latest in a series of strategic arrangements announced this year by Vanaways, following the creation of partnerships with Veriforce CHAS and Fleetmaxx Solutions to cross-promote services to tens of thousands of businesses across the UK.

Together the organisations will provide customers with a holistic provision of services ranging from fuel and fleet cost reduction, to risk prevention, compliance and supply chain services and now, with Artura, an end-to-end claims management service.

“It’s a win-win for everyone,” said Liam Nicholas, business development director at Vanaways. “Over the past few months we’ve built up a consortium of like-minded companies who we can work with in these strategic partnerships.

“Between us, CHAS, Fleetmaxx and now Artura, we can offer the business community a wholly different suite of options for buying, risk managing, fuelling and maintaining their vehicles.

“We’re all united by common values of doing what’s best for our customers, with the business benefits to ourselves coming as a secondary advantage. That’s an approach which is new and different, and it’s been the basis for our success over recent years.”

Among the beneficiaries of the new relationship will be bodyshops like Bumps Accident Repair Centre in Swansea, which has been part of the Artura network since early 2022.

Turnover has risen in the past two and a half years from £120k to £475k at the end of the company’s most recent financial year, with profits trebling during the period.

Owner Leighton Broome said: “We’ve changed our business model and so we’re doing insurance work as well as trade repairs. It’s had a major impact on workload – I’ve gone from being a one-man band in a 1,500sqft workshop to employing four people in a premises three times the size.

“Now that Artura are teaming up with Vanaways things are only going to go up a level as we refer work in both directions and broaden the network we operate with.”

Artura Consultancy is headquartered in Colchester, Essex, and was set up by Anthony Heard who established Evolution Repair Group in 2020.

The new company has only been operating since May 2022 and has already grown from three to 24 staff, generating more than £80m of revenue for the UK bodyshop industry and with company revenue rising by 163 per cent in the past year alone.

“What we’ve decided to offer is a service which straddles the divide between claims management companies and bodyshops,” said Mr Heard. “This relationship with Vanaways will request SLAs which demand immediate attention for Vanaways work, in exchange for the significant volume which will be sent the way of those bodyshops we work with.

“In a challenging economy and with insurance premiums and excess prices rising, we’re finding that many vehicle owners are no longer claiming for minor repairs. That’s causing bodyshops to struggle to meet the necessary revenue requirements.

“We want to offer out the complete claims management package that will give clients the best customer journey whilst helping bodyshops optimise their space and time.  Together our bodyshops, alongside Artura Consultancy, will drive down wasted claims costs which will make it better for the Vanaways customer base. It’s a model where everyone wins.

“For the customer, the potentially crippling costs of having vehicles off the road – estimates range from £400 to £800 per day – can be minimised through this relationship.

“In general, it’s a people-based approach not a system-based one. We’re all highly experienced, we’ve all worked in the big corporate industry and we know there’s a better way of doing things.”