Intralogistics provider becomes world market leader in the high-capacity sortation technology

The BEUMER group (Beckum), leading supplier for conveying and loading technology, palletizing and packaging technology as well as sortation and distribution technology has acquired the Danish Crisplant AS from U.K.-based financial investor Melrose/FKI. Crisplant supplies baggage sortation systems for airports and also delivers sortation technology for service providers in the courier, express and package area. As a result, the BEUMER group now ranks among the world market leaders in this sector. In 2008, with 950 employees world-wide, Crisplant achieved a turnover of 150 million EUR. With this acquisition the BEUMER group grows to about 2,000 employees and increases its turnover to 350 million EUR. Crisplant has been a well-established brand in the high-capacity sortation technology on the international market since 40 years now. Therefore, it will be controlled as independent brand also in future. Between the 1970s and 1984 BEUMER and Crisplant worked closely together especially on the German market.

For Dr. Christoph Beumer, Chairman and CEO of the BEUMER group, this acquisition supports the long-term alignment of the company. He said, 'Our credo is the long-lasting success and not the short-term profit'. 'Therefore, in our opinion, it is necessary to act in straight-forward and meaningful way also in economically difficult times. We have done our homework over the years and now, in a countercyclical way, we invest in the future of the BEUMER group and the respective employees. This way, we will emerge stronger from this difficult world-wide economic situation.' Dr. Beumer sees considerable synergies in the baggage handling technology of airports and in further business areas.

Background information: FKI is an established global company that operates in different business areas such as oil and gas as well as power stations. At the end of the nineties the company acquired several intralogistics companies as Crisplant and concentrated the activities under the FKI Logistex brand. In 2008 Melrose PLC., an U.K. financial investor, acquired FKI and declared FKI Logistex for sale. In June 2009 FKI Logistex in the USA was sold to Intelligrated, a company also based in the USA. The FKI Logistex business in Europe, Africa, Middle East and Asia, which recently started to operate again under the brand name 'Crisplant', has been acquired by BEUMER.