Finning UK & Ireland, the Caterpillar equipment dealer, has acquired John F Hunt Power Group, one of the UK's larger specialist generator rental businesses, for an undisclosed sum reported by trade press to be in the region of £50m, Building and The Construction Index reported this week.

The deal brings across around 145 staff working out of six depots nationwide, along with a fleet of roughly 2,500 generators, and includes Morris Machinery, a manufacturer of specialist site equipment that employs around 10 people. John F Hunt founder John Hall set up the power business in 1998. It will continue to operate as John F Hunt Power Group, A Finning Company, with existing contracts, pricing agreements and account management teams staying in place. Finning said the acquisition is projected to more than triple its power rental revenue in the UK and Ireland, taking its combined workforce there to around 1,900.

Why it matters

Temporary power has quietly become one of the steadier corners of the plant hire market, driven by data centre construction, grid connection delays that leave developers needing bridging power, and major infrastructure programmes that need generators long before permanent power is available. A deal of this size, folding a well established independent into a much larger equipment group, points to consolidation continuing in that specialist end of hire, where scale increasingly matters for winning the largest, longest contracts.

For John F Hunt Power's existing clients, the message is continuity: same contacts, same pricing, same depots, but now backed by a larger balance sheet and Finning's wider parts and servicing network.

What it means for your career

For engineers, technicians and depot managers currently in temporary power or generator hire, consolidation deals like this one tend to bring more job security in the short term, not less, because the acquiring firm is buying the team and the client relationships along with the kit. If you are weighing options within John F Hunt Power itself, a bigger group behind the brand usually means broader internal mobility, from regional depot roles into national account or technical management positions.

More broadly, this is a reminder that power generation and temporary power is a growing specialism worth building toward if you are a mechanical or electrical engineer currently in general plant hire. With data centres and grid-constrained developments both needing bridging power for years to come, experience with large-scale generator fleets, HV distribution and site power design is becoming a differentiator on a CV, not a niche.