Lineage Logistics has made its first acquisition outside of the United States with the purchase of Partner Logistics, a European refrigerated warehouse company that ranks as the world’s ninth largest cold storage operator. Lineage, the world’s largest refrigerated warehouse business in the world, is owned by San Francisco, California-based investment firm Bay Grove Capital, LLC. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“This transaction is a great opportunity for our company and our customers,” said Partner Logistics CEO Duco Buijze. “We are excited to join Lineage and to increase the resources we have for growth and to expand our service offerings.”
Lineage’s logistics services include managed transportation, customs brokerage, processing and manufacturing. Having grown through major acquisitions and new construction since its founding in 2008, the company’s domestic USA facility footprint now numbers over 100 locations offering more than 609 million cubic feet of temperature-controlled capacity.
With the acquisition of Partner Logistics, Lineage adds over 101 million cubic feet of cold storage capacity and expands its operations to include six state-of-the-art, fully automated warehouses and one conventional warehouse in the Netherlands, Belgium and the United Kingdom.
Headquartered in the municipality of Bergen op Zoom in the southern Netherlands, Partner Logistic’s network of cold storage facilities boasts total capacity of over 500,000 pallets.
“Our acquisition of Partner Logistics represents an ongoing commitment to serving our customers’ global supply chains by delivering dynamic, sophisticated cold chain logistics solutions,” said Greg Lehmkuhl, Lineage’s president and chief executive officer. “We are thrilled to welcome the Partner team and are confident that their industry expertise, particularly in automation, will accelerate our organization as a thought leader in this area with existing and new customers.”
The deal marks an important step in company’s broader automation strategy, which has been in development for over three years. Earlier this year Lineage announced plans to construct its first automated cold storage facility in the Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas market, and will use the acquisition of Partner Logistics as an additional platform for new automated projects in USA and Europe.
“The vision of Lineage Logistics is to be the world’s most dynamic temperature-controlled logistics company, and our expansion into Europe is a significant milestone in achieving that goal,” said Adam Forste, managing partner of Bay Grove Capital. “This transaction also highlights our commitment to automation as a critical pillar of our growth strategy globally.”
