The KION group, maker of industrial trucks, has bought the Indian forklift truck and warehouse truck manufacturer Voltas Material Handling for a cash deal of Rs 58 crore.

“The KION group has now become the sole shareholder in Voltas Material Handling (VMH), with the purchase of Voltas’s 34 per cent minority shareholding,” Sunil K Gupta, who has been designated as managing director and CEO at VMH told Financial Chronicle.

The KION group had paid Rs 110 crore in May 2011 to Voltas for transferring its materials handling business division to their joint venture company Voltas Material Handling and held majority stake at 66 per cent.

Gupta said as part of the deal, VMH will continue to use the “Voltas” brand for its products range such as diesel trucks, LPG trucks and electric forklift trucks with load capacities of 1.5 to 16 tonnes plus warehouse trucks and services.

“At present, we are number one in forklift and second in material handling equipments. We want to be the top leader in the Rs 2,000 crore size material handling equipment, warehousing equipments and logistic market in India in the next couple of years,” Gupta said.

KION’s technology leadership with full range of warehouse equipment will help to achieve it, he said.

He said though the market in the first half of this year had cooled down, and the company had achieved its bottomline, its CAGR will be 18-20 per cent in the next five years. “With the Indian government committing $1 trillion in the next five year for infrastructure development, the key growth driver across all sectors, the material handling equipment and warehousing equipments market will double every five years,” Gupta said.

He said at present the company has the capacity to produce a range of 3,000 equipments annually at its Pune plant.

“It capacity will be raised to 5,000 equipments as the market picks up,” Gupta said. He said in its first full year of commercial operation ending in March 31, 2013, VHM would clock a turnover of Rs 225 crore.