Renta expands in Sweden with heavy equipment acquisition

Renta Group has agreed to buy Arema Heavy Rental Sverige, a Swedish rental company specialising in heavy earthmoving equipment used in infrastructure projects and building foundation works.

Arema has eight depots in Sweden, 45 employees, and annual revenues of SEK200 million (€18 million). The acquisition is expected to be completed in October 2026.

The deal signals a move by Renta into large earthmoving equipment rentals and further strengthens its business in Sweden. Arema’s fleet includes crawler and wheeled excavators, loaders, dumpers, rollers and other earthmoving equipment of up to 40 tonnes.

Joacim Johansson, managing director at Renta Sweden, said the acquisition represented an important step for Renta in Sweden; “The acquisition gives us immediate access to an attractive specialist category and creates meaningful opportunities to serve both Arema’s and Renta’s customers with a broader offering.”

The CEO of Arema, Björn Janström, added; “By combining Arema’s specialist expertise in heavy earthmoving equipment with Renta’s broad product range, depot network and digital solutions, we will be able to offer our customers an even stronger service proposition and create new opportunities for our employees.”

Renta Group has made more than 43 acquisitions since it was created in 2016 in Finland.

Kari Aulasmaa, Renta’s CEO, in a soon-to-be-published interview with International Rental News, said heavy equipment was becoming a more interesting rental market.

“It seems that the overall rental market of compact excavators and loaders...there’s kind of saturation beach already”, he said, “If you go to a Bauhaus [builders merchants] nowadays, you can buy after excavator for €5-6,000 euros, which is cannibalizing a little bit the rental market.

“But on the other hand, it’s obvious that the trend towards heavier earthmoving in rental is increasing. That’s been a sector where rental penetration traditionally has hardly existed.”

The full interview with Kari Aulasmaa will be published in the coming days.