UniCarriers Corporation has completed its acquisition of Dutch forklift dealer Crepa Groep BV.

The acquisition value is confidential.

Tobias Laxa, Europe group marketing manager at UniCarriers, tells Forkliftaction.com News that all Crepa employees became a part of UniCarriers from 3 February. "Also, the members of the management have been kept in their positions.

"Crepa will operate as a forklift dealer independently under the UniCarriers umbrella."

Laxa says Crepa is now a supplier of the UniCarriers forklift brand and its customers will be offered a wide range of UniCarriers products. The offering will include UniCarriers, Atlet and Nissan forklifts. Atlet offers trucks for all warehouse applications, while Nissan Forklift covers the counterbalance forklift truck sector.

UniCarriers expects to boost its after-sales service and "gain knowledge of direct sales and service" as it expands in Europe with the acquisition of Crepa.

"By purchasing Crepa, whose strength is in outdoor forklift products, we can construct a complementary relationship in all classes of forklift in the Holland and Belgium markets," UniCarriers said in a statement last year.

The Japanese forklift company is expecting "a positive effect" on its next quarterly or half-yearly financial reports as a result of the acquisition.

UniCarriers started its full-scale forklift business with the integration of the former TCM Corporation and the former Nissan Forklift Co Ltd on 1 April 2013 (Forkliftaction.com News #610).

Headquartered in Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo, the company, which made the Top 10 of the dhf-intralogistik's world ranking list of industrial truck manufacturers (Forkliftaction.com News #654), will "continue to do mergers and acquisitions actively in order to be in the top group of the industry globally".

UniCarriers signed an agreement last year with Peinemann Holding BV for its subsidiary UniCarriers Europe Holdings (UCEH), headquartered in Meerbusch, Germany, to buy Crepa, which has a sales network in Belgium and the Netherlands.

The Innovative Network Corporation of Japan owns 53.5% of UniCarriers Corp, while Hitachi Construction Machinery Co Ltd and Nissan Motor Co Ltd own 26.7% and 20%, respectively. A total of 4,890 people were employed as of April 2013.

Crepa Groep BV employed 175 people as of December 2012. It has over 3,800 forklifts on lease and rental contracts. It became the official Dutch dealer for Cat Lift Trucks in 2007 (Forkliftaction.com News #314).