Swedish construction machinery heavyweight Atlas Copco has announced it will acquire Erkat Spezialmaschinen und Service GmbH, a German manufacturer of drum cutter attachments for excavators.

Erkat has sales and service locations worldwide. The company makes drum cutter attachments for excavators used primarily in construction and demolition, and for quarries and tunnels.

“Drum cutters are an ideal complementary product for Atlas Copco as a solution provider in rock excavation, tunnel and foundation profiling and demolition,” Vladimir Kozlovskiy, president of Atlas Copco’s Construction Tools Division, was quoted as saying in a statement from the Swedish company.

It added that the German brand is well recognised for premium quality and continuous innovation, has 38 employees and had revenues in 2015 of $12.86m.

In demolition and rock excavation today, a new technology is breaking through, mainly driven by legislation, to reduce sound and vibration, but also due to better performance in certain applications and material properties, Atlas Copco said.

“Drum cutters close the gap in certain applications between the ordinary buckets which are suitable for soil excavation and the highly sophisticated hydraulic breakers which are used in hard rock extraction,” Kozlovskiy added.

The parties have agreed not to disclose the purchase price. The acquisition is expected to be completed in the first quarter of this year.