The Beumer Group, a leading technology provider for a wide range of supply chain functions, announced Sept. 10 it had acquired Crisplant AS, a Danish sortation technology provider, from U.K.-based Melrose/FKI for an undisclosed sum.
Germany-based Beumer supplies technology for conveying, loading, palletizing, packaging, sortation, and distribution operations. Crisplant provides baggage sortation systems for airports and sortation technology services for the courier, express, and package delivery sectors.
Christoph Beumer, Beumer's chairman and CEO, said in a statement that he sees the acquisition creating "considerable synergies" across multiple businesses, but particularly in the baggage-handling segment.
Under the transaction, the Crisplant brand will be retained and will be marketed as an independent entity, Beumer said in the statement. With the acquisition, Beumer grows to a US$510 million company with approximately 2,000 employees, it said.
The sale of Crisplant is another step by FKI/Melrose to divest its material handling holdings. In the late 1990s, FKI acquired several logistics companies such as Crisplant and combined them under the FKI Logistex brand. In 2008, financial services company Melrose PLC bought FKI and announced it would put FKI Logistex up for sale. In June 2009, FKI Logistex's U.S. operations were sold to Intelligrated, another U.S. company.
