Nissan, NACCO: No deal
By Staff -- Modern Materials Handling, 2/1/2000
The deal is off. Nissan's worldwide forklift operations won't be acquired by NACCO, the U.S.-headquartered company that already owns and manufactures the Hyster and Yale lines of lift trucks.Late last month both sides to the proposed purchase by NACCO Industries of the Nissan forklift business from Nissan Motor Co. Ltd., Japan, said that they had been unable to reach a final agreement on terms and conditions of the planned merger.
Negotiations on the deal, unveiled May 17, 1999, had continued into January 2000. But they were officially terminated as of announcements from Nissan and NACCO.
Combining the Nissan, Hyster, and Yale brands under one owner would have created one very large worldwide company. Together, Hyster and Yale sales in 1998 amounted to $1.713 billion, as NACCO reported to Modern Materials Handling for the magazine's exclusive Top 20 ranking of lift truck companies (October 1999 ). Adding MMH's estimate of Nissan sales in 1998 of $770 million would put total revenues for the three-brand company at just under $2.5 billion.
On a world sales basis, Linde Group, with revenues reported to MMH at an even $2.5 billion for 1998, ranked first among all global lift truck companies.
Combined production of lift trucks for Hyster, Yale, and Nissan for 1998 was more than 100,000 units, according to NACCO's Materials Handling Group. That total, based upon a projection of world production of 550,000 units, would have given the merged companies an 18% share of the global market.
Within the U.S., Hyster and Yale sales of lift trucks, according to NACCO, were just under 30% of the total domestic market for 1998, moreover.
The Nissan/NACCO merger had been scrutinized by regulatory agencies in the U.S. and overseas. Sources close to the negotiations emphatically denied that regulators had killed the deal. Reportedly, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission had implicitly blessed the merger, according to one source.
Nissan Motor will continue to run the global forklift operations as one of its businesses. Plans to close Nissan's Murayama plant in Japan in March 2001 will go ahead as scheduled. Nissan said it is already working to set up production of lift trucks and components at an alternate site in Japan so as to ensure a smooth transfer to the new facility.
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