A Liftking straight-mast forklift

Manitex International has sold its Liftking rough-terrain forklift subsidiary to the LANCO Group of Companies, parent of Mi-Jack Products, for USD14 million.

Illinois-based Mi-Jack produces rubber tyres and rail-mounted gantry and industrial cranes and sees the acquisition as a good fit with its goals and reputation.

"Liftking has a well established network of dealers and customers who have been very satisfied with the reliability and quality of the Liftking  products," says LANCO executive Mike Lanigan. "That's what we were most impressed with (in) this company and we will continue to build on that tradition," concludes Lanigan.

For Manitex, the divestiture of Liftking is "another important step forward in our corporate program to focus our resources on our higher-margin core lifting businesses and to reduce the company's indebtedness, which remain our top corporate priorities this year and heading into 2017," says Manitex chief executive David Langevin.

Liftking, based in Toronto, Canada, was founded in 1968, with a focus on providing engineered lifting solutions in a variety of materials handling fields, specialising in rough-terrain forklifts. Manitex acquired the business in November 2006 for USD7.1 million.
 
The sale includes all facilities, work in progress and forward orders, including valuable US Navy, UN and Canadian Military contracts.

Liftking general manager Jeff Cockerton tells Forkliftaction News all staff and management will be retained.

"There will be no immediate changes to business as we will continue to function as normal; however, this venture does open up new development opportunities for everyone.

"We do anticipate growth opportunities as our product lines will complement each other and as we begin leveraging each other’s dealerships.'

He believes Liftking will benefit from LANCO’s extensive marketing and sales resources, its network of Fortune 500 companies, and the wealth of experience of numerous high-level management individuals to draw upon for production, sales, marketing and engineering expertise.

"LANCO is an organisation that believes in investment of engineering new products.  We will continue to determine the next steps internally, but as a specialised materials handling engineering firm also, there should be some exciting new products that come from us in the near future," he adds.

Cockerton stresses that the past 10 years "has been a great run for Liftking under the Manitex umbrella as we have grown our business both with our military customers and internationally. Now, joining the LANCO group of companies, we will be able to leverage the worldwide parts and service and great established dealer network of Mi-Jack products and Broderson Cranes, both world leaders in their areas of expertise."