Copart already possesses a salvage auction presence in both the U.S. and the U.K., and now the company can say it strengthened its position in Canada as well.

The online wholesale operation announced Tuesday that it acquired Diamond Auto Bids and Disposals, a privately held auction company with locations in Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta.

The acquisition provides Copart its first locations in western Canada for what officials said was to accommodate their expanding Canadian customer base.

Auto Remarketing’s attempts to reach Copart for more details and commentary about the acquisition were unsuccessful.

Copart chief executive officer Jay Adair hinted during a conference call with Wall Street analysts back in March when the company revealed its second-quarter performance that the operation is gearing up to gain more non-insurance volume because of what it’s assigning for future capital expenditures.

Adair said Copart has more than “12 facilities in the pipeline that will be opening or expanding in the next year” because of “market share gains and increased volume associated with non-insurance gains.”

During the same March call, analysts asked Adair not only about Copart’s significant business in the United Kingdom, but whether or not the company would establish salvage yards in other countries.

“The U.K. is doing fantastic,” Adair emphasized. "We’ve got all of our locations fully integrated. We’ve continued to see growth in that market. We’re continuing to see high (average selling prices), as well as high unit volume. Our team there has done a fantastic job.

And when touching on the potential of venturing into emerging markets, Adair added, “That could happen as early as this fiscal year. It will definitely happen in fiscal 2013. That’s definitely something we’ll be pushing hard on. How much growth will we see? That remains to be seen, but Copart hasn’t been shy in the fact that we’re going to have an international expansion.”

The topic of expansion also came up last September when Copart highlighted its 2011 fiscal year financial statement.

Analysts prompted Adair to discuss whether Copart is going to push deeper into the whole-car segment because of its success of Copart Direct, the company’s business entity that caters to retail purchases.

“It’s one of these things where it is growing at a very high rate but it’s a relatively small book of business,” Adair noted. “While it generates a large amount of revenue, the fact is you’re buying the cars as opposed to handling them as an agent.

“When we get into what we’re doing as initiatives, we’ve got some great people on the team who are working on that. I don’t like to get into specifics because obviously we think some of the things we do are unique to Copart,” he continued.

“But we are heavily focused on this. It’s a nice market. It has great upside for us. It has great opportunity,” said Adair, who also added non-insurance business was up 21 percent in the fourth quarter and 22 percent for the year.

So if Copart continued to see strong whole-car success, would it create a new brand identity for that business?

“Yes, Copart is synonymous with that damaged vehicle. But we’ve got thousands of customers out there that send non-damaged vehicles to us because people are aware we sell non-damaged product. We just continue to improve in that segment,” Adair told analysts in response to that question.