GeoPost ramps up presence in Italy, Brazil and Russia
GeoPost has announced changes to its operations which will expand its presence in Italy, Russia and Brazil. In Italy, GeoPost has strengthened its ties with BRT. The two companies have renewed their cooperation agreement between BRT and DPD for the next five years and GeoPost also acquired a 37.5% stake in the share capital of BRT yesterday (16 January).
A long-standing partner of DPD, BRT has a network of 180 branches across Italy and delivers more than 650,000 parcels a day.
According to GeoPost: “Besides being Italy’s leading operator in B2B express courier market, BRT has recently substantially increased its technical and organizational resources in order to adequately meet the challenges coming from the high growth of e-commerce B2C express courier market in Italy.”
In Russia, GeoPost has requested authorisation from the Russian competition authority to merge DPD Russia with SPSR Express, a key player on the Russian CEP market. GeoPost anticipates that the request should be finalised in the first quarter of 2017.
“The ambition of the merger is to create a global B2B/B2C player which will offer a comprehensive and enhanced range of courier and express services on the Russian market,” said GeoPost. “The resulting synergies aim at accelerating the development of the new entity and more specifically at supporting the strong growth of e-commerce in Russia.
“With around 7.5 billion roubles sales (More than 120 million euros), DPD Russia is currently the third-biggest player on this market followed by SPSR Express. Thanks to its domestic network with 125 depots, DPD Russia delivers more than 17,000 locations and handled more than 18 million parcels in 2016.
“SPSR Express has a domestic network of 15 distribution centres, 200 offices and representatives. This extensive network covers the whole Russian territory delivering 6,000 cities and towns. SPSR Express has 4,000 employees.”
GeoPost has also announced that it has expanded to South America for the first time, acquiring a 60% stake in JadLog, currently the second-biggest player on the Brazilian CEP market.
In 2016, according to GeoPost, JadLog had a revenue of 406m Brasilian reals (€110m), a 12.2% growth over the previous year, representing more than seven million parcels delivered.
