Norway Post buys Swedish transport firm
Norway Post today continued its Nordic expansion with the acquisition of Swedish road haulage company CombiTrans for an undisclosed sum. The deal will strengthen its logistics activities in the region.
CombiTrans, with 105 employees, had operating profits (EBIT) of SEK 50 million (euro 5.4 million) on revenues of SEK 540 million (euro 57.9 million) in 2007. In 2006, it dispatched 16,000 vehicles and 94,000 consignments with a freight haulage weight of 348,000 tonnes.
The company, set up in 1986, specialises in international road haulage services for single consignments, as well as full and part loads. It covers the whole of Europe, with particular focus on Greece, Turkey, the Balkans, and the rest of Eastern Europe, as well as Central Asia and the Middle East. It has offices and terminals in the Swedish towns of Varberg, Malmö, Ystad and Jönköping, as well as in Greece.
“With CombiTrans we will have a strong position among the leading logistics players in the Nordic market,” said Norway Post CEO Dag Mejdell. The Norway Post group would become a more attractive partner for Nordic distribution, he commented. CombiTrans will join Norway Post’s existing portfolio of transportation and logistics companies, including Nor-Cargo, Transflex, Frigoscandia, Box Group and PNL.
Norway Post has expanded strongly in the Nordic region in recent years in order to reduce dependency on the mail market, diversify into growth sectors such as international transportation and logistics, and counter the expansion of multinationals in the region. It has invested over euro 636 million on acquisitions, and aims to double revenues from outside Norway to nearly 50% of group revenues by 2011.
Its Logistics business, covering express, parcels and freight transport, accounted for 45% of group revenues in 2007 and grew by 11.4% to euro 1.5 billion, making it the largest of the four Nordic postal operators in this sector. Its logistics revenues in Sweden amounted to SEK 2.5 billion (euro 268 million).
Norway Post aims to increase its overall logistics revenues to NOK 20 billion (euro 2.5 billion) in the medium-term through further acquisitions. “We will continue to buy companies in the Nordic region in order to further improve our products and solutions for our Nordic customers,” Mejdell stressed.
The postal group is planning to combine its Nordic postal and logistics activities under a new single brand later this year. It has already selected green, the colour of express subsidiary Box Group, as the future corporate colour, and will only retain the traditional red colour for its Norwegian businesses.
