If revenue figures among the industry's top system suppliers are any indication, 2007 was a great year to be in the materials handling equipment business.

Seventeen of the 20 companies included in Modern's annual ranking of worldwide materials handling system suppliers reported revenue gains in fiscal year 2007. Most of the companies enjoyed double-digit gains, and a few—including TGW Transportgerate (No. 12) and Beumer (No. 17)—saw sales increase more than 30%.

The combined revenue of all 20 suppliers reached nearly $14.4 billion. That's up 23% from the combined revenue of last year's Top 20 companies.

In order, the five largest system suppliers based on fiscal year 2007 revenues are Schaefer Holding International, Daifuku, FKI, Dematic and Mecalux. These same five companies topped the 2006 list, in the same order.

Top-ranked Schaefer says major projects in the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany and developing Eastern European countries helped make 2007 a record-breaking year. The German company also successfully launched a line of collapsible containers for the North American automotive market.

Revenue growth at No. 2 Daifuku was due primarily to the company's acquisition of Michigan-based Jervis B. Webb. The acquisition happened late enough in 2007 that Japanese accounting practices won't permit official consolidation of the two companies until next year, but Daifuku asked Modern to treat Daifuku and Webb as one company for the purpose of our ranking.

To qualify for Modern's list, companies must be suppliers of materials handling systems, not just equipment providers. In addition to manufacturing at least two major handling system components, a company must also employ full-time staff that designs, installs and integrates materials handling systems.

These systems include at least two of the following: transportation devices, storage and staging equipment, picking units, sortation systems, information management systems, data capture technologies and other types of handling equipment.

Companies must have a presence in North America to be considered worldwide suppliers. They must also be able to report their materials handling revenues to Modern's editors. (Siemens and Lockheed Martin, for example, are system suppliers with a North American presence who aren't included in our ranking because they can't single out the portion of their revenue that comes from materials handling contracts.)

Three companies are new to this year's list: Swisslog (No. 8), Fives Group (No. 11) and Dearborn Mid-West Conveyor Co. (No. 19).

Swisslog returns after a brief absence. The company dropped off the list when it divested its equipment divisions to focus on providing software and integration services. In 2007, however, Swisslog purchased Accalon, a manufacturer of conveyors and automated storage systems, making it once again eligible for our ranking.

Accalon was a part of Swisslog from 1994 to 2000 before a management buyout took place.

Fives Group (formerly Fives Lille) is an industrial equipment manufacturer based in France. Fives (pronounced “feev”) entered the North American materials handling market in June 2007 when it purchased Sandvik Sorting Systems, a Swedish sortation company with an office in Kentucky.

Sandvik has been renamed Cinetic Sorting and placed in the materials handling division of Fives, along with Cinetic Automation and Cinetic Landis. The $492 million in revenue Fives Group reported for 2007 represents sales from all three of these materials handling companies.

Dearborn Mid-West Conveyor Co. appeared on our list last year under the name of its former parent company, Tomkins. Tomkins, a large British conglomerate, sold Dearborn to a New York-based private equity firm in Nov. 2007, leaving the company to appear under its own name on our list this year.

European companies continue to dominate the list. Fourteen out of the total 20 companies are based in Europe—five of them in Germany alone. Of the remaining companies, two are based in Japan and four in the United States.

The strength of the Euro appears to have given European suppliers a boost, while most of the U.S. suppliers slipped in the rankings.

As previously noted, Germany's Beumer and Austria's TGW Transportgerate reported 2007 sales figures that exceeded their 2006 figures by more than 30%. While this revenue growth wasn't enough to move either company substantially in the rankings (Beumer moved up one position to No. 17, and TGW held steady at No. 12), it's certainly worth noting.

Spokesman John Sarinik says the growth at Beumer is a reflection of the globalization of the company. “We've always been strong in Europe,” he says, “and now we're becoming more well known in the States and the rest of the world.”

In the United States, he says, the company has seen substantial growth in sales of its sortation products in particular.

The primary cause of TGW's revenue increase, says spokeswoman Patty Westfield, is the company's “extensive growth” in the United States and Europe.

“In addition,” she says, “European sales are generated in Euros, which we convert to show revenues in U.S. dollars. The exchange rate of Euros to USD has been very favorable.”

TGW has recently acquired an Austrian system supplier, Ecolog Logistiksysteme. According to Westfield, the Ecolog acquisition is not reflected in TGW's 2007 numbers but will be a factor in the next fiscal year.

Another acquisition expected to be a factor in next year's ranking is Mecalux's planned purchase of UFI, the parent company of rack manufacturer Interlake. Mecalux (No. 5) announced in early 2007 that it intends to buy UFI (No. 17) this summer, at the end of UFI's 2008 fiscal year.