IN MERGER PACT
Page 39
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BRITAIN'S largest trailer and container manufacturer, with a production capacity far greater than any other in Europe, will be created by the merger of Crane Fruehauf Trailers Ltd., Dereham, and Boden Trailers Ltd., Oldham, announced on Friday. To achieve the mutually-agreed merger Crane Fruehauf will buy Baden Trailers for over £2m in cash and shares.
The transaction will be further cemented by the appointment of Mr. C. ("Bill") Boden as managing director of Crane Fruehauf.
Between them CF and Boden claim to build about 40 per cent of the general haulage semi-trailers sold in Britain, and are making an increasing percentage of skeletals for containers, as well as vans, drop-frames and specials.
The two make-names. will continue, at least for the time being. Rationalization will be on the engineering side at first rather than in marketing. Already prototypes combining the best features of both makes are being built. It is expected that production rationalization alone will increase the effective total capacity of the Dereham, North Walsham and Royton plants by about half.
Announcing the merger, Crane Fruehauf's chairman, Mr. L. H. Allwood, said his company would pay £100,000 in cash for all the 4,900,000 issued ls shares of Boden Trailers and would issue 1.8m new shares of 2s each. To maintain its one-third interest in Crane Fruehauf, the US Fruehauf International has agreed to buy, for £1 a share, 600,000 of the new shares to be issued to shareholders of Boden.
Boden Trailers is a private company (Mr. Boden and his family hold 35 per cent of the shares, the rest are held by members of the firm or close associates). It started in 1955 with a capital of £7,000, is now valued at about £2m and is centred on a highly mechanized 200,000 sq. ft. factory on a 16-acre site at Royton, completed this year. Semi-trailer production is estimated at about 60 a week. And this plant alone is said to have the biggest trailer-making capacity of any in Europe.
Crane Fruehauf started as Cranes in 1865 and began making road trailers in 1920. In 1961 Cranes (Dereham) Ltd., and Wall Engineering Co. Ltd., negotiated with Fruehauf International (a subsidiary of the US Fruehauf Corp.) to create Crane Fruehauf Trailers Ltd., to build British and US-design trailers at North Walsham.
Two years later Cranes (Dereham) Ltd. acquired the whole share capital of this company, and renamed it Crane Fruehauf Trailers Ltd., while the North Walsham subsidiary became Crane Fruehauf Trailers (North Walsham) Ltd. There are four senior US Fruehauf directors on the Crane Fruehauf board