GeoPost expands throughout Europe
GeoPost, the parcels division of French mail operator La Poste, and owner of the DPD franchise has expanded its operations throughout the Baltic and eastern European region in a major deal with Swedish Post Office, Posten.
GeoPost will acquire Baltic Logistics System International AB (BLS-I) from Posten a group which includes Masterlink Express in Poland, Armadillo in Russia and BLS Lithuania, BLS Latvia and BLS Estonia. Armadillo was acquired in conjunction with Yurtiçi Kargo with whom GeoPost presently has a joint venture in Turkey. The combined revenue of these companies amounted to more than EUR 35 million in 2003.
In the last two months GeoPost has been highly active on the acquisition front. It acquired a 21% stake in Spanish parcels company Seur when it purchased 60% of the franchised operation Seur Madrid for what is believed to be in the region of €120-130m. This also gave it a 40% stake in Seur’s international business. The deal was completed when other franchise holders managed to prevent the sale of the franchise by Seur’s founder Justo Yufera, to investment funds Bridgpoint and JP Morgan. Over the past five years, Seur has seen its turnover almost double, rising from 277.9m euros in 1998 to 499.7m euros last year.
Meanwhile in the UK and Ireland the company has announced that it is to invest £40m (€58.4m) in new facilities. This will involve a new hub in Birmingham for Parceline to work alongside its existing site and a re-building of its Interlink hub in Athlone, Ireland. It has forecast growth at around 7% per year which will come as a result of increasing its market share in the domestic UK market and also due to the re-structuring of European sister company, DPD.
