NZ Post buys into Australia
NZ Post buys into Australia
13 August 2001
By TOM PULLAR-STRECKER
New Zealand Post has bought a 25 per cent stake in Sydney supply chain firm Dawson Group in a multimillion dollar move to create e-business opportunities in Australia and further afield.
The transTasman play links in with NZ Post's e-business drive and last year's purchase of Australian courier company Couriers Please.
The 70-person Dawson Group bills itself as "Australia's largest consultancy specialising in logistics and supply chain management".
The stake is understood to have cost NZ Post several million dollars. The acquisition was carried out by NZ Post's entrepreneurial Enterprises Group.
This group has also entered into a conditional agreement to purchase outright, for a few million dollars, Auckland Internet messaging company Message Media from listed investment company E-ventures. It already owns 20 per cent of Message Media.
The Dawson buy-in gives NZ Post access to Dawson's supply chain management software, including flagship warehouse management software system ISIS GII. It also gives NZ Post an impressive base of consultancy clients in Australia and a route for expansion into Asia and the northern hemisphere.
Dawson's clients include Swiss foods giant Nestle which is using Dawson's software in its hi-tech warehouses throughout Asia, Oceania and Africa.
The customer list reads like a "who's who" of Australian corporates, including most of the major banks, and many of Australia's largest manufacturing, mining, logistics, food, automotive and pharmaceutical companies.
Post Enterprises Group new ventures leader Paul Robinson says Dawson competes primarily with the supply chain management arms of the "big five" consultancies, and has software and consultancy skills NZ Post does not currently own.
He says the purchase fits in with NZ Post's "three-pronged" strategy of "building a leading electronic business, doing well outside New Zealand, and doing well in New Zealand".
"TransTasman is increasingly a single marketplace. Lots of our revenues come from companies which are multinationals and it is increasingly important to operate in certain parts of the value chain in different parts of the world."
Dawson is now 50 per cent Kiwi-owned. Auckland investment company Invescor holds 25 per cent, while interests associated with Dawson Group chairman, renowned former-Aussie Rules footballer Mark Dawson, retain 50 per cent ownership.
Invescor's directors include New Zealand and Venezuelan private investors.
NZ Post bought Couriers Please, an Australian courier company with revenues of about $50 million, in July last year and NZ Post distribution group manager Chris Callen, who has responsibility for that business, will be appointed to Dawson's board.
NZ Post is also hoping for synergies between Dawson and two other companies in its Enterprises Group e-business portfolio – electronic document interchange (edi) company ECN, which specialises in helping large buyers do away with the paperwork involved in doing business with large numbers of suppliers, and Auckland workflow software company InfoLink, in which Post owns a one-third stake.
NZ Post is assisting ECN to cross the Tasman in its own right, pumping an additional $1.5 million in capital into ECN in return for 150,000 redeemable preference shares. NZ Post bought a 50 per cent stake in ECN in 1999 for $1 million – one of its first venture capital plays.
ECN has used the new capital to purchase a 50 per cent stake in Sydney-based edi companies Tedis and PacStream. The two Australian firms have been merged under the Tedis brand and former ECN chief executive Wayne McLaughlin has relocated to Sydney to head the 50 per cent subsidiary.
