TIL gets bigger… and bigger again
THE SECOND BIG TRANSPORT AND LOGISTICS company acquisition in three months has seen Taranaki-based Transport Investments expand into what’s believed to be New Zealand’s largest privately-owned trucking operation.
TIL’s purchase of NZL, only a few days after it completed the purchase of Christchurch-headquartered Move Logistics, has brought total TIL Group truck numbers (including exclusively-contracted owner-driver units) to almost 900.
Prior to the buyouts, NZL ran around 120 units, with the Move eet numbering 100. Move employs over 300 people, and NZL a comparable number.
In line with its practice after earlier acquisitions, TIL intends to maintain NZL and Move as standalone divisions within the Group, joining the existing freight operations Hooker Paci c, TNL, Roadstar, Paci c Fuelhaul, ATL Haulage and McAuley’s Transport.
TIL chairman and managing director Jim Ramsay acknowledges a certain amount of overlap between NZL’s activities – primarily container and linehaul transport – and some of the TIL Group’s existing companies, but says that’s already the case: “ ere’s some crossover in a lot of the businesses within the Group, but they work in together...
“And the same will apply to NZL. From an operational point of view it will remain totally independent.”
e deal was reportedly prompted by the desire of NZL Group owner Ken Harris to nance further expansion of container depot operator ContainerCo, which he owns in partnership with the NZ arm of Chinese shipping group COSCO. ContainerCo was formed four years ago from the merger of NZL’s container depot operations with United Containers and the purchase of CENTREPORT Wellington’s container hire and sales business, and has operations in Tauranga, Auckland, Napier and Christchurch.
Wellington businessman Harris had led a management buyout of NZL in 2006 and the company reportedly was turning over more than $100million within three years.
Neither Ramsay nor Harris have been prepared to divulge the sale price of NZL, but Harris was reported as saying he was happy with the deal: “It was a fair price for both parties, I didn’t try taking the last dollar out of the business.”
Ramsay concurs: “We thought it was fair as well. We’ve known Ken for many years, and have a very good relationship with him – as also we have with Brendan Prendergast from Move, so these longstanding associations made for the basis of good transactions.”
e Move purchase, he says, sprang from the TIL Group’s mediumterm strategic direction: “We’ve had a small warehouse operation before this, and the acquisition of Move, which is one of the top warehousing companies in NZ, is part of a plan to become more involved in that sector. Like NZL, Move will continue to operate independently.”
ough NZL is also involved extensively in warehousing, Ramsay doesn’t see a con ict with Move, explaining that NZL’s warehousing is more of a bulk storage nature, while Move’s Emphasis is very much on 3PL services.
T&D