01.04.2019

A new name in tower cranes

Belgian tower crane specialist Arcomet and French tower crane rental company Matebat are finally to merge, under the new name - Uperio. Philippe Cohet the chairman of Matebat and chief executive of Arcomet, will retain his leadership role over the merged business, as well as the rest of the group.

The Uperio name essentially combines the words Up and superior representing the upward motion of tower cranes with the superior service and technology that the merged company plans to provide.
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Matebat and Arcomet will merge under the Uperio brand

The new entity will be the largest tower crane rental company worldwide, with a fleet of 2,200 cranes - 50 percent of them located in France and 50 percent internationally. It will have revenues of more than €200 million and will operate from 23 locations across eight countries, with with 550 employees, 350 of them directly involved with renting, erecting, servicing and delivering the cranes.

The Arcomet name will be retained for the group’s crane manufacturing operations in Belgium, in fact next week it will launch a new high capacity self-erecting tower crane at Bauma. The rental fleet will start transitioning to the new branding in the next few weeks. The company also has plans to add further "complimentary" product lines, such as hoists and formwork.

Cohet said: "This alliance would not only be recognised by its size. This project is also the symbol of an ambition The major objective of this project will consist in strengthening the professionalism of its activities and the talents of its employees by developing their skills and their commitment. Moreover, within the scope of this project, we are striving for enhanced reliability and profitability of the building sites we are entrusted with. We envisage to pool the new technologies, innovations and our own field experience."

"The offering of this new group would therefore not only be fortified by the latest crane models, but also by complementary crane operating support systems and associated services to better satisfy our customers. Finally, this project will allow the extension towards other geographical regions, with additional building site facilities such as passenger hoists, formwork, electrical systems etc.. in order to offer to a growing number of customers, increasingly developing and diversifying solutions.”

Vertikal Comment

This move makes good economic sense for the shareholders, customers and almost certainly for most of the employees. It has been on the cards for more than a year with a short delay announced at Intermat last April - See Arcomet, Geda, Matebat, Reflex

However, the new name - Uperio - doesn't immediately 'grab' you but the clean, simple logo and colours look good. Finding a name that works equally well across a wide number of different countries and languages is always very challenging, and to be fair, once a name and logo have been adopted, widely used and well promoted for a while, it usually becomes well accepted and even loved. It is certainly infinitely better than adopting one of the two existing names for the merged business, which sends the message that one is superior to the other, and always creates problems, given the emotional attachment employees and customers have with their brand.

If marketed correctly the new name will work well and help the company go on to even greater things.
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Uperio, a new new in tower crane rental