Castik Capital, the European private equity investment firm, has completed its acquisition of the transport services unit of Wolters Kluwer (hereafter called Transport Services or “TS”).
Transport Services is a leading player in transportation management software and freight exchange solutions headquartered in Brussels.
Transport Services provides its customers with “on demand” transport management software and services (TMS) equally catering for all transport and logistics professionals. Through the scope of their services it is one of the few providers able to address the needs of carriers to freight forwarders, or from logistics providers to shippers.
Its +100,000 user community is electronically connected every day to successfully manage critical transport processes. All solutions allow its customers and their partners to interact electronically. They can be additionally combined to deliver more value to Transport Services’ customers and theirs.
Transwide is its main transportation management software product: Shippers, logistics service providers and carriers use it to manage the end-to-end execution of transports while significantly reducing their costs and improving the supply chain visibility. Given the increased digitization of supply chains, Transwide operates in a fast-growing and very dynamic market for cloud-based TMS solutions.
Teleroute, Bursa and 123 cargo are its main freight exchange products: Shippers and logistics service providers use them to find carriers that execute mostly spot shipments and carriers use them to fill free capacities. As such, Teleroute and Bursa are the leading freight exchanges in France, BeNeLux and Romania and serve more than 30,000 customers daily.
Earlier in May, Castik Capital completed the acquisition of inet logistics, a rapidly growing software-as-a-service provider of transportation management systems (TMS) for complex, global transportation networks and a long-standing participant in the Gartner Magic Quadrant. Together inet logistics, Transwide, Teleroute and 123cargo/Bursa will form a global logistics software group.
The management team of inet logistics, CEO and founder Oswald Werle, Andreas Muther and Artur Vonblon, will together with the CEO and CFO of the former Wolters Kluwer business unit, Fabrice Maquignon and Koen de Waele, be on the group management board. For the time being, both companies will continue to operate under their own brands, and keep their current product offering, while the aim is to further improve the joint offering to enhance the value to their customers.
“The Transport Services businesses and inet logistics are great companies with strong growth potential – together, they will be even better placed to benefit from global opportunities and better serve their loyal customers,” said Michael Phillips, Partner of Castik Capital. “We continue to see strong growth in the market for logistics software as the value provided to their customers is immense and there is momentum for further digitalization of the logistics operations. Castik is committed to invest in the long-term organic growth of the two businesses while continuing to look out for value enhancing add-on targets in this field.”
“We are very excited about our two new partners, Castik Capital and inet logistics, as we can jointly continue to invest in the growth of the company while providing our customers an even more global and sophisticated solution,” said the Transport Services CEO Fabrice Maquignon. “We plan to create one of the leading global software logistics groups and provide the best solution to our customers, and this deal sets us on that path.”
Alongside Castik Capital, the Austrian logistics firm Gebrüder Weiss, inet logistics founder and CEO, Oswald Werle as well as both companies’s senior managers are the shareholders in the combined group.
Castik was advised on the transaction by, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, White & Case (debt), PWC, Crosslake, Roland Berger, Pöllath + Partners, Arendt & Medernach, and Willis.