The strategic acquisition, which was announced on 1 November, will see Arlington Heights, Illinois-based Fluence become part of Danbury, Connecticut-headquartered BlueCrest. In the short-term the business will be referred to as Fluence Automation, A BlueCrest Company.

Fluence’s portfolio includes products for material handling, letters and parcels sorting, high speed print and apply labelling, postal parcel processing and verification and inspection, among others.

BlueCrest said the deal means it “now directly provides all critical solution layers to customers – application solutions with hardware, software, controls, and imaging”.

“The acquisition of Fluence Automation is a great example of BlueCrest executing on its strategy,” said Bluecrest president and CEO Dennis LeStrange.

“In the postal automation market, we will provide the broadest array of solutions and will be able to continue to grow in this space through product innovation both in the US and the international markets.

“Additionally, the combination of the companies’ parcel/e-commerce and vote-by-mail solutions will greatly expand our offering in these exciting growth markets.”

Fluence president Mike Swift added: “This is a great opportunity for both Fluence and BlueCrest.

“The combination of our solutions with BlueCrest’s resources further strengthens our position in sortation technology. Our market focus has been on offering transformative automation for organisations that process mail and parcels.

“BlueCrest’s breadth and scale further enhances the technology and support that we can provide for our customers.”

Earlier this year BlueCrest launched its rebranded version of Kyocera’s TASKalfa Pro 15000c inkjet production press to the UK market.