Clark growing, going global
Clark's Dorio: Our focus is forklifts.
By Staff -- Modern Materials Handling, 4/1/1998
LEXINGTON, KY.-Widely rumored to be all but out of business several years ago, Clark Material Handling Company is doing far more than just surviving. Now management-owned, Clark has taken steps in recent months to grow at a rather heady pace.Late last year, the manufacturer of lift trucks bought the Blue Giant companies (see December 1997, p. 17). Earlier in 1997, Clark acquired Hydrolectric Lift Trucks, Inc., a maker of forklift uprights. More recently, Clark began its bid to acquire the forklift division ($50 million annual sales, 4,000 trucks a year) of South Korea's Samsung Heavy Industries and a Samsung plant in Changwon.
When this latest merger is completed in a month or so, Clark will add an Asian Pacific base to its existing operations in the U.S. and Germany-and become a global force in forklift manufacturing and sales.
The Samsung acquisition "will significantly increase our international capabilities," suggests Marty Dorio, Clark president and CEO. Even so, Dorio quickly knocks down any notion "that we're an acquisition story. I don't have a new business development group," he stressed in an interview with Tom Feare, managing editor.
But there's a key caveat in his remarks about the likelihood of any more mergers-"except as opportunities arise."
The Blue Giant merger was one such opportunity. Blue Giant founder Kurt Larsen was retiring; the company has been "very profitable," Dorio says. And, Clark gains an upgrade to its product lines from the merger: "Six of nine of our Clark pallet trucks had been outsourced; they also were older designs," he declares.
Blue Giant's line includes manual and electric pallet trucks. By mid-year Clark will have invested $1 million in improving BG's Pell City, Ala. plant. "It will become the center for both Blue Giant's and Clark's brand names for class III trucks," Dorio adds. (Dock equipment has been consolidated in the Brampton, Canada, plant, meanwhile.)
Similarly, the Samsung purchase centers around another opportunity for Clark: the Korean economy's slide downward and with it the sinking value of the Korean won vs. the U.S. dollar. Samsung's parent firm needed "to take bold steps to restructure," Dorio says, and to focus on its core businesses, by selling off units to Clark and Volvo.
Samsung and Clark aren't strangers. The two have had ties for 15 years, with a joint venture from 1986-94. Samsung now makes small (3,000 to 3,500 lb capacity) pneumatic tire trucks for Clark. "Samsung forklifts are grounded in Clark technology," Dorio observes.
Clark will import Samsung trucks, branding them as Clark models for markets in North-, Central-, and South America. Samsung-made trucks (3,000 to 15,000 lb capacity) will be offered as basic models to users, alongside similar Clark Genesis trucks that are more full-featured, Dorio says.
Clark won't repeat its past mistakes of trying to be a materials handling systems company, Dorio says. "Our focus is forklifts," he declares emphatically. "We won't get into AS/RS and the other automated handling technologies."
But having Blue Giant's lines of dock equipment gives Clark something of a leg up to learn about potential new business: Dock levelers, lifts, and similar units usually are specified well before any lift trucks are ordered.
"We will get in to see new customers six to nine months before they're ready to buy or lease their forklifts," Dorio points out.
Clark "won't try to be the biggest company" in its business, Dorio adds. "We had 35% of the U.S. market once," but the company "also lost money in 10 of 12 years." Instead, he hopes to derive reasonable returns for investors.
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