Firm’s quality leads to sale

Mar 27 2008 Evening Gazette

ONE OF THE world’s biggest manufacturers of escalators and elevators has bought up a family-owned Stockton firm because it makes ‘better straight stair lifts than they do’.

The merger between German owned ThyssenKrupp group and award-winning Lift Able, will be good news for businesses on Tees as the multi-billion pound Euro giant pumps investment into a firm that was honoured only last year for its commitment to local suppliers.

Angus Long, commercial manager for Lift Able, which plans to ramp up production and staffing following its acquisition last month, said ThyssenKrupp had been anxious to get in the UK market - the world’s largest buyer of stair lifts - for some time.

“The UK market is by far the most lucrative - around 40% of the world’s stair lifts end up here and around 70% of those are straight stair lifts,” said Mr Long.

“They acknowledged their product was not as good as ours. They could have developed their own, but that’s expensive and takes time.

“ThyssenKrupp is a multi billion pound company. What it means for us is investment and stability, so we are intending on expanding our UK operations. We can then supply more straight lifts into Europe where we didn’t have a proper export operation in the past. We expect manufacturing to go up, and we use local suppliers so as our production goes up, their business will go up, too.”

The Lift Able brand will continue under the new ownership.

Jim Simmonds, Lift Able's owner, added: "We are very pleased to have found a strong partner in ThyssenKrupp Access, together we will simply be stronger and it's our customers who are going to reap the benefits".

ThyssenKrupp, the major supplier of lifts to the Beijing Olympics, said the deal would ‘significantly strengthen’ its market position.

"Joining forces now we will be able to expand further our activities and offer tried-and-tested products not just in the UK but European markets as well,” said ThyssenKrupp Access chairman Mauro Carneiro.

With a turnover of more than £10m and 87 employees Lift Able is one of Europe's five largest manufacturers of straight stair-lifts, while ThyssenKrupp supplies stair-lifts, platform lifts and home lifts, from 15 countries.