GERMANY: Refrigerant compressor manufacturer Bitzer has taken over the truck- and trailer-cooling division of Finnish company Lumikko Oy from private ownership for an undisclosed fee.
As part of the transaction, Bitzer is buying all of the shares in the transport cooling division and keeping on all 20 of its employees. Kari Saikkonen, son of one of the company's founders, will become managing director of the new Lumikko Technologies Oy.

'By taking over this division we are creating the conditions from which to become a system supplier in truck and trailer cooling,' said Michael Bauer, Bitzer's chief sales and marketing officer. Both companies have had associations on joint projects that go back as far as the 1980s.

Bitzer's objective is to become technology leader in the truck- and trailer-cooling market. Open and semi-hermetic transport compressors will come from Bitzer, controllers from the Danish Bitzer subsidiary Lodam, and the cooling units, customer service and maintenance from Lumikko.

Helmut Meyer, director of sales at Bitzer's Transport Division, said: 'Combining our abilities will position us firmly as a system supplier. Intelligent solutions from a single source will reduce life-cycle costs while increasing energy efficiency and reliability. We want to gain ground with every large-scale supplier of trailers and truck bodies around the world.'

Lumikko was founded by the Saikkonen brothers in 1970 in their garage at home, and today produces at three locations in Finland: Seinäjoki, Tampere and Helsinki. The company has been selling its cooling systems to the EU since the early 2000s; a Chinese licence partner has been manufacturing Lumikko solutions since 2012.