Essex is one of the most intensively arable counties in England — flat, productive and built around very large grain stores, machinery sheds and vegetable cold-stores. We specify and install the roofs those buildings actually need.
The Essex farming belt is dominated by arable on a scale you don't really see in the Wealden counties. The country between Maldon, Witham, Coggeshall and Braintree is open, flat and built for combinables — wheat, barley, oilseed rape, beans — rotating on holdings that frequently run to four-figure acreage. Push north to the Saffron Walden and Newport area and the story is similar: big fields, big farms, big sheds. That dictates the kind of roof we end up specifying: clear-span structures of 30, 40, even 50 metres, capable of carrying the snow load that does happen here and shedding the run-off from a roof with hundreds of square metres of catchment.
The other Essex story is vegetables. The lighter land toward the Dengie peninsula and east of Colchester carries serious vegetable acreage — brassicas, onions, potatoes — with the cold-store, washing and grading infrastructure that goes with it. That work brings a different roof spec: insulated composite panels rather than single-skin, properly sealed for refrigerated bays, and laid out so that wash-down and condensation control inside the building actually work. We've done several of these between Tillingham, Burnham and Tiptree and the buildings keep working hard year-round.
The third big Essex sector is contracting. Essex has a disproportionate share of large contracting businesses — firms running combine fleets, sprayer fleets, drilling rigs across hundreds of clients' acres — and those businesses need substantial machinery sheds to overwinter and service the kit. We build and re-roof those sheds regularly, usually with heavy-duty box profile, oversized gutters and big roller-shutter detailing.
30–50m span grain stores typical of the Essex arable belt — heavy snow-load spec, ridge ventilation, anti-condensation linings to protect stored crop.
The big contractor sheds across the Braintree and Witham belt — combines, sprayers, trailers all under one span. Heavy-duty box profile, reinforced gutters, roller-shutter rainwater detailing.
Wash, grade and pack buildings serving the brassica, onion and potato holdings around the Dengie and east of Colchester — insulated composite for the refrigerated bays.
Refrigerated long-term storage for onions and potatoes — properly sealed insulated-panel construction, vapour-controlled, designed for the temperature differentials.
Smaller share of the workload in Essex than in Sussex, but still significant — beef finishing units, equestrian yards on the rural fringes of Chelmsford and Saffron Walden.
Class Q and rural-economy conversions — redundant Dutch barns becoming wedding venues, offices, holiday lets. Standing-seam or slate-effect finishes for planning sign-off.
"New build, 42-metre clear-span grain store with a 6-metre eaves height. We needed it watertight before September. New-Cladd's price was middle-of-pack on quote stage but the programme was the one that actually held — in on time, off on time, no last-minute drama, and the spec was right first time. Combine started rolling into a finished, dry building."
All of CM (Chelmsford, Maldon, Witham, Braintree, Saffron Walden, Harlow) and CO (Colchester, Halstead, Clacton, Tiptree, the Dengie peninsula). We also reach into IG and RM on the London-border side and SS on the south coast estuary.
Yes — this is bread-and-butter work in Essex. We can manage the project end-to-end including portal-frame design and erection in partnership with our regular frame contractor, or we can come in for the envelope (sheeting, cladding, gutters, rooflights) on a frame someone else has erected.
Yes — we've done several around the Dengie, Tillingham and Tiptree vegetable areas. Cold-store envelopes need proper insulated composite construction, vapour-sealed joints, and a separate spec from the rest of a multi-bay packhouse. We price and detail them as a distinct section of the building.
Yes — we plan agricultural roof work around the harvest and drilling windows. For grain-store work the usual pattern is to start as soon as the previous year's store has been emptied (typically January–March) so the building is back in commission for July/August. We won't book a major job to overlap your harvest window.
Yes — we handle the asbestos in-house under the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012. A surprising number of older Essex farm sheds — particularly the 1970s Dutch barns and former livestock buildings — still carry asbestos cement. We can strip, dispose and re-cover under one contract with full clearance paperwork.
