TWO businesses are relocating to the Winnall Farm Industrial Estate, on Wales Street, Winchester.

Sussex-based plant and tool hire firm, Beaver Tool Hire, have opened their fifth Hampshire depot.

Alfred’s Brewery, currently at Scylla Business Park, will shortly relocate to enable it to increase their output.

Beaver Tool Hire has depots in Chichester, Portsmouth, Waterlooville, Denmead and Fareham. The company hire machinery, cement mixers, scaffold towers and sell building equipment to building firms and the public.

Managing director Neil Johnson told the Chronicle at their launch event: “We are predominantly Hampshire based, all our other depots other than Chichester are in Hampshire. We have turned into a Hampshire company.”

Mr Johnson said that his firm spent £50,000 doing up the premises which the landlord also helped fund.

He said Beaver Tool Hire currently employ three people at the depot however this may soon rise to five or six and if it is as busy as some of its other branches they could employ up to 15 staff.

Steve Haigh, brewer and founder of Alfred’s Brewery, said: “We’ve been running at full capacity for two years now. Once I move here, I’ll be able to significantly increase our capacity. It will go from about 2,000 pints a week to perhaps 8-9,000."

He added: “Our beer is sold 90 per cent within half a mile of the brewery in Winchester. Moving here will enable us to expand further, will allow us to make more recipes and sell more bottled beer. We currently only sell draught beer for pubs to sell on tap.”

Keith Webb, the landlord of the industrial estate was at the launch event and said: “We have huge pressure to keep places let as we are charged rates even when they are empty. But we like to help small business and they become our friends.”

Keith, 86, has run Winnall Farm Industrial Estate for the last 35 years.

He said that originally he was considering borrowing £1.5million to transform the site after the previous tenants left in November.

However when the city council would not commit to explaining what the site could be used for he found himself in a dilemma which was solved by the new tenancy agreement with Beaver.