LONG-established Belfast contract hire, rental and hire purchase specialist Traction Finance has been acquired by Radius Vehicle Solutions.
The move will allow Radius, which is one of the leading providers of flexible and fixed term commercial vehicle hire and leasing, to further scale up its business throughout Ireland and the UK.
Traction, previously known as Lease Options and which has been helping individuals and businesses since 2003, has a wide portfolio of fleet customers across the UK and Ireland. It currently has 2,500 vehicles, with 36 per cent of new sales this year coming from electric vehicles.
Last year Traction, which has a staff of 53 people, tripled its bottom line profits from £788,000 to £2.2 million on hugely improved sales (up from £15.4m to £26.6m).
Becoming a part of Radius Vehicle Solutions (www.radiusvehiclesolutions.com) is see as offering Traction an opportunity to grow its portfolio, as well as access to Radius’ wider line-up of solutions such as telematics, insurance, e-mobility and telecoms for its customer base.
Paul McGuire, managing director at Traction Finance, said: “We're delighted to become a part of Radius Vehicle Solutions.
“It allows us to expand our unique Island of Ireland offering to a full eMobility solution, offering chargers, charge cards, as well as telematics, dash cameras, insurance and telecoms under one roof for our clients.
“We’ll also be working with some of the best in the industry, and that is a very exciting prospect.”
Bill Holmes, chief executive at Radius, added: “This acquisition follows Global Go last year which now gives Radius Vehicle Solutions increased scale and a capability to service our customers throughout the UK and Ireland.
“We are really looking forward to working with Paul and his team to accelerate the roll-out of their solutions, giving us a competitive edge in the Irish market.”
Radius Vehicle Solutions is a division of Radius Payment Solutions, a Sunday Times Top Track 100 company which has more than 40,000 customers across the island of Ireland in telecoms, fuel cards and telematics.
It previously acquired leading local telecoms firms Rainbow Communications and Connect Telecom, which have become part of the Radius Connect telecoms business.
Radius was founded in 1990 by Bill Holmes and now has over 2,000 employees and an annual turnover of more than £2.6 billion.
