Crown Equipment Corp has opened a company-owned branch in Lenexa, Kansas within a metropolitan area spanning the Missouri-Kansas border and having more than two million residents.

Crown employs 30 staff in the 70,000 sqft. (6,503 sqm) facility, with plans to have 60 new jobs within five years. Functions include sales, parts, maintenance, training, rental and remanufacturing.

"Many of our customers in this region are national companies with large distribution centres," says Paul Wright, branch manager. "This new facility ensures that we're able to help all of our customers operate at peak levels of productivity without experiencing costly downtime from maintenance-related incidents."

For New Bremen-based Crown, the Lenexa location is its 56th company-owned branch in the US and the first one dedicated to serving Crown customers in the Kansas City metropolitan area. Lenexa is about 15 mi. (24 km) from the centre of the metropolitan area.

In a statement, Pat George, secretary for the State of Kansas department of commerce, says of the business development: "This is great news for our economy. Our business environment is strong, and it gets even better when companies like Crown invest here and hire Kansas workers."