Uperio acquires Compass in USA

French tower crane specialist Uperio Group has acquired Compass Equipment in the USA

International tower crane specialist Uperio Group has acquired Compass Equipment Holdings based in the USA.

Compass Equipment was founded by Kelly Hadland and Ray Bellamy. It offers sales, rental and service of tower cranes and hoists from four locations in the western United States. More than 70 employees work in the Phoenix, Arizona, Las Vegas, Nevada, Denver, Colorado and Los Angeles, California, depots.

The fleet includes 45 tower cranes and the same number of construction hoists. Compass is also a Potain tower crane dealer and works with Alimak for the hoists.

France-based Uperio, which boasts a fleet of more than 2,200 cranes, said it sees “considerable development potential for both equipment segments in sales, rental, and service.”

Philippe Cohet, Uperio Group CEO

Philippe Cohet, Uperio CEO, explained, “Compass is an addition with excellent potential for us in every respect: on the one hand, the four depots in the west of the USA provide very important access to regions with good development prospects in residential construction and, on the other hand, it provides a broader overall product offering to our group. While the market in the regions is competitive, we believe that with a strengthening of Compass’ operating model and support of Uperio Group in multiple dimensions, we will be able to profitably accelerate its growth, especially with their healthy order backlog.”

For his part Kelly Hadland at Compass said, “We are pleased to have found a partner in Uperio that has the resources and expertise to lead Compass into a bright future – building on the solid foundation we have established. The markets in our regions are promising, and we are confident that we will wisely execute plans for further growth with its proven management expertise.”

Hadland and Bellamy will remain in charge of the business with the current team, Uperio said.

Cohet added, “With our new colleagues from the western USA, we plan to raise the quality of our operations, to continue investing in the fleet and gain a premium market leadership position thanks to the unique quality of our people. We are very excited about our future.”

Cohet is a speaker at the Tower Cranes North America conference on 21 and 22 June 2022 in Miami, USA, where his topic is fleet management. For more information on the event click here.