BRITAIN’S largest used car supermarket is launching a contract hire and leasing company.

Carcraft Group, which has a £275 million turnover, is behind All-in-One Leasing, which will launch in the new year.

It is believed to be the first move into the fleet sector by an independent used vehicle retailer.

The new company will target sub-15 car fleets through a direct telesales and marketing team, while looking to sign up medium-sized fleets of up to 500 vehicles through a field-based new business sales force.

It will offer a range of contract hire, funding and vehicle management services and be based at Carcraft’s headquarters in Rochdale.

The company claims that the size and experience of this team, coupled with Carcraft’s retail capability, will create a competitive advantage by mitigating All-in-One’s residual value risk.

This, together with the reduction in the company’s disposal costs by selling defleeted vehicles directly through its parent company, will mean reduced leasing rates, it adds. The company is offering new fleet customers a duty-of-care launch offer, including a full risk assessment, for the first year as a free bonus.

All-in-One’s executive director Tony Williams, said: ‘The professional contract hire and fleet sector’s biggest threat, both to simple survival and to providing competitive leasing rates and high quality customer service, is that of suffering major losses on residual values.

‘With All-in-One being a wholly-owned subsidiary of Carcraft, this threat is transformed into a unique competitive edge – a pipeline of quality used vehicles flowing straight into Carcraft. We intend to take full advantage of our unique position, as well as our access to very competitive funding, to offer fleet decision-makers excellent rates on all vehicles and a customer service policy that we are convinced will win business from our competitors.’