Cramo creates new brand for accommodation business

Cramo has created a new sub-brand, Cramo Adapteo, for its portable accommodation rental business to help it penetrate non-construction markets.

Cramo Adapteo is the brand that will be used to increase its activities in non-construction areas such as real estate and the public sector, providing temporary facilities for offices, schools and healthcare.

“In people's minds, Cramo is associated, above all, with the construction industry, but the customers of our modular space solutions are more and more in the public sector and in real estate”, said Petri Moksén, senior vice president at Cramo Adapteo, who will run the business.

“With the Cramo Adapteo sub-brand, we want to further increase the prominence of our company in real estate and in the public sector”.

Mr Moksén has worked with Cramo for six years, the last two as director of its modular space business.

The name Cramo Adapteo – derived from the Latin words Ad (to, towards) and Apto (adjust, adapt) - will be introduced in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Cramo will also seek footholds for the business in Poland and Germany.

The newly branded division employs around 100 people, of which around a third are in Finland.

As part of the strategy, Cramo will increase cooperation between its subsidiaries in different countries. “In the future, we intend to spread modules across countries even more than before, as our equipment is now more compatible among different countries”, said Mr Moksén, “We will also do sales work together and carry out joint product development more than before”.

Cramo is already well established in the portable accommodation market, with a fleet of 15300 units in Northern Europe and the Baltic States. The modular space business represented 12.3% of Cramo’s revenues last year.

“The popularity of modular space is explained by the fact that they adapt to the needs of the customer”, said Mr Moksén, “One can start perhaps with some 30 square metres’ units, and the sky will be the limit when it comes to expansion.”

He said that property owners should use temporary, modular space for around 6 to 10% of their total space, to keep costs down; “In Finland, for example, only about 2% of all spaces are modular; therefore, we still have a large margin for growth”.

Mr Moksén said Cramo’s local experience gave it a competitive advantage; “We differ from many of our competitors due to the fact that our new space solutions have been designed in the Nordic countries and for Nordic conditions. They comply with all the building regulations and requirements concerning, among other things, ventilation, energy efficiency and building technique.”