in depth newsdesk l Aiming for Division 1


Briggs Equipment UK Ltd, the national independent service provider and materials handling equipment specialist, has bought Yale Materials Handling’s UK business and will be the exclusive dealer from 1st August.


The deal will see Briggs – which has been the exclusive independent UK distributor of Cat Lift Trucks – taking over distribution of the Yale brand in England, Scotland and Wales, but not Northern Ireland.


Talking to ShD about the deal, Briggs Equipment’s CEO in the UK, Richard Close (pictured), says the acquisition will move his company up the scale, and place it in a position to challenge the Big Three, namely Toyota, Linde and Jungheinrich.


“This gives us the opportunity to move into Division One. When we bought this business, we were in mid- Division Two. I think, by what we’ve achieved, we have reached the top of Division Two, which allows us now to get into Division One.


“We now have every facility to enable us to compete with anybody. We have a private parent company – very supportive of us, and whose investment is starting to pay out – global supplier, loyal customer base and good employees.


“There’s also hunger in Yale for volume and success I haven’t seen in a manufacturer for a long time. Yale in the UK was run by its own distributor. I strongly believe that distribution is best to be independent.


Manufacturers know how to build trucks, and they build them very well. We know how to


service customers, and we don’t know how to build trucks. Our sole focus is on satisfying the customer.” Whilst Yale will retain its UK properties, Briggs has taken over the staff, the contracts and the customers, and has the capacity to run the enlarged operation out of its existing Cannock headquarters.


It will remain a non-exclusive Cat Lift Trucks dealer until 30th September, at which point it will exit that particular franchise. Although Cat will effectively thereafter become a competitor to Briggs – the Dutch company has confirmed its commitment to the UK and is expected to make an announcement about its new set-up – Richard Close says the handover will be a smooth one. “It’s been a very amicable split and they’ve been tremendously supportive,” he says, “but they didn’t need to be, in fairness, because we’re walking away from them. They’ve been really good about it. We want to help them into whatever they want to do next.”


In acquiring the assets of Yale UK, the current distributor, Briggs will pick up around 3,000 new contracts, each of which will be contacted by a member of Briggs’ team as the deal enters its early stages. Richard Close says the ambition to challenge the Big Three was there when Briggs took on the Cat business from Finning in 2006, but that the form in which the opportunity has arisen wasn’t.


“I’ve been working on this for quite a long time,” he says. “It was by no means a pre- arranged deal when we bought the


Finning business in 2006. We were committed to Cat. Briggs is the Yale distributor in the USA and the Yale and Hyster (both owned by NACCO) distributor in Mexico, but the decision to change franchise was very much a UK decision. The US were supportive, but they didn’t influence the deal.” We asked Richard Close what attracted his company to the Yale brand. “One of the most exciting factors is that we’re with one of the big, dedicated global forklift manufacturers. Yale design, develop and manufacture all their own product in all their own factories. Another factor is that there’s a real alignment between Briggs and Yale/NACCO at the highest level. There is a complete clarity around our objectives – we both want the same things, which is important, as we’ve 100 million invested in this business and you have to be with a manufacturer that shares your goals.


“Furthermore, it gives us a step up. I always saw the development of Briggs as a two- or three-stage process. Stage One was to buy Finnings, turn it round and get the business sorted out. Then we have to move and to step up a level, and this deal enables us to do that. Our fleet has now grown to 10,000+, and a global supplier enables us to get into international accounts, which we have found difficult in the past couple of years.


“NACCO has its trucks specified to exactly what the market demands, and its main territories are dominated by rental customers. So, I think Yale products are much more suited to the long-term rental market than some of the other products. They are more robust, and built for longer-term maintenance. For example they have wet brakes and LED lights as standard. They may be more expensive on Day One, but over the life of the contract they will be cheaper.


“There are a lot of options in Yale’s base products. They have a heavy duty, medium duty and a light duty. Instead of having one product that you add things on, there are three base products, so there is a multiplication of options, which opens up all sorts of opportunities for us.


“I’m also pleased that 60% of trucks will be British, from Northern Ireland, so we can keep the flag flying. That’s a big advantage, because I can buy them in pounds with no currency worries. It’s


a state-of-the-art plant with great people and exceptional quality.” When Briggs took over the business from Finning, its fleet of forklifts was an amalgam of the Finning fleet and the Lex Harvey fleet, the latter of which was an independent dealer, meaning the combined fleet was very mixed. Only recently has the proportion of Cat trucks crept over 50%, and it now stands at around 60%. Richard Close says there’s no intention to force Briggs’ customers to switch to Yale.


“Slowly, and at the customers’ request, we’ll convert [the fleet] to Yale, but I don’t see that process happening overnight. Most customers are comfortable with us as the supplier and happy for us to run whatever we run. We’ll replace the fleet at the end of its normal life with Yale. The same with our short-term rental fleet.


“The number one priority is to give comfort to the existing Yale customers that we will be able to service them at least to the level they have already been receiving, if not better. Initial feedback from our customers has been tremendously supportive, because they see themselves first and foremost as Briggs customers. They are less worried about the truck than the service provision.”


Yale Material Handling’s current sub-dealers – the Forkway Group and Lloyd Limited – will be offered the opportunity to remain sub-dealers under the Briggs umbrella. As we were closing for press, discussions were ongoing, but Richard Close describe the talks as “pretty positive”.


With Yale not originally scheduled to appear at November’s IMHX, and with Briggs originally intending to exhibit the Cat range, Briggs’ plans for the event are still under discussion with Yale. The most likely course is that Briggs will exhibit under its own name.


Richard Close concludes: “We’ve seen Yale’s product development plans, and there is a constant renewal of the range into the future. That’s very exciting. Reach trucks, big trucks, electric trucks... there’s a pretty large range that’s constantly getting updated. I’m really keen to look at what’s coming down the line in five or 10 years’ time. We’re in this for the long run, and I want to be selling these trucks to my customers at the end of their current contract, and the one after that.” www.briggsequipment.co.uk


www.PressOnShD.com August 2010 ShD 7


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