It all started back in 1982, with Blue and Gav (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 and has since moved on in 2019 to leave Stephan with both hands on the wheel.
Stephan Rattray - sole Director since 2019
Stephan has a long association with civil construction in Canterbury and had been a consultant project manager for BGCL for two decades before becoming a shareholder in 2012. Now as the sole shareholder, he is dedicated to upholding BGCL's reputation of delivering quality workmanship on time and on budget. With a highly committed Senior Leadership Team the legacy of BGCL has continued, where loyal relationships have remained core to the values etched within the business.
BGCL, from our base in Rangiora, now has an annual turnover of between $15 - $20 million, employs over 70 staff and operates over 120 items of plant, much of it John Deere and Komatsu machinery and the rest Hitachi. The machinery inventory includes 14 excavators, 7 loaders, rollers, graders, dozers, various trucks ranging from water carriers to six-wheelers, and a substantial fleet of utes.