The deal includes all Verticon’s tower cranes, hoists, ancillary equipment and employees other than those engaged solely in its property development division. This includes Comedil, Comansa, Liebherr, Favco and Potain tower cranes; and Alimak, Baoda, Pega and GJJ hoists.
Post-completion on 1 June, D&G’s fleet will include 160 tower cranes, 17 mobile cranes and 140 material and passenger hoists, with around 280 full time staff.
The deal expands D&G’s presence from Western Australia, where it is based, to the east coast, where its operations will trade as D&G Verticon Hoist and Crane Hire in order to maintain the Verticon name in the area. D&G now operates out of Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, with partnerships with local hire companies in Adelaide, Darwin and Singapore.
D&G managing director Gino Decesare told Cranes Today that the company had considered the deal carefully and decided the addition of Verticon “makes our business that much stronger”.
“It’s a risk being an employee let alone in business these days,” he said. “Especially since October last year when banks started failing. Now the financiers are scared to lend any money, it’s crazy.
“We considered the market very carefully and felt that the Verticon business just makes our business that much stronger. We now have outlets where we can send our surplus cranes from Perth into. The state of the economy allows us now to do this softly rather than the more aggressive approach of the last few years where we had to place orders for 25 cranes at once and wait two years for delivery.”
Decesare said the Verticon business will continue to operate as normal, and as such there will be no reduction in worker numbers or assets. “The business will continue to run as it currently runs; the people in each state are needed.”
He added D&G is currently tendering for a number of large crane contracts that will keep it busy for the foreseeable future.
“We do have concerns of some slowing in general activities for a while related to the global financial crisis and Australia entering a recession for a few years. There are some major crane contracts we have tendered which are recession busters. If we can win these we should be busy for the next two years.”
