Industrial brand management company Barloworld Limited (Republic of South Africa) has concluded an agreement to sell the materials handling equipment lease and loan portfolio held by its industrial distribution division in the United States at book value for R564 million (approximately $77 million U.S.) to Hyster Capital, a joint venture between General Electric Capital Corporation and Nacco Materials Handling Group, Inc. (NACCO, Portland, Ore.).
NACCO manufactures the Hyster brand of lift trucks. Barloworld has been a Hyster dealer since 1929 and has a network of territories which includes eight states in the south-east US, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Holland and the whole of southern Africa. This network makes Barloworld the largest independent lift truck dealer in the world.
Announcing the sale of the US book, Barloworld Chief Executive Officer Tony Phillips said: "This is another move in our ongoing work to optimize our business and ensure that we unlock value where capital is tied up in unproductive assets. There are a number of other projects currently underway in this regard including the disposal of our steel tube division and a number of other disposals which we will announce in due course.
"Hyster Capital satisfied our prime consideration to provide a seamless service between us and our customers to continue what we considered to be a value added function," said Phillips. "We are negotiating with a partner in the UK to dispose
of our UK book to achieve the same objectives. It is considerably bigger than the US book. We expect this deal be concluded by the end of this calendar year."
Source: Barloworld
