Royal Mail acquires major stake in Spanish B2C market

France based Royal Mail Group subsidiary General Logistics Systems (GLS) has bought the Spanish express parcel delivery company ASM Transporte Urgente.

GLS has released a statement saying that the acquisition of ASM will provide GLS Spain with “significantly enhanced size and scale”. Where GLS Spain tends to focus on the export market, the acquisition of ASM will improve its ability to take on the Spanish domestic market.

The purchase gives parent company Royal Mail a huge step into the Spanish B2C delivery market. ASM is the biggest single express delivery company in Spain, and accounts for more than 10% of the country’s domestic parcels market, delivering around 25 million parcels in 2015. It has 16 hubs and branches, and more than 1500 daily distribution routes.

The delivery company did well last year, generating €78 million in revenues in 2015. The total consideration for the acquisition was about €71 million. In a statement from GLS, the company said, “Given the potential synergies the transaction is expected to be economic profit accretive for GLS in 2018-19.”

Rico Back, Chief Executive Officer of the GLS Group, said, “ASM is a great strategic fit for GLS. It gives GLS Spain a significantly increased footprint in both size and scale. The combination of ASM and GLS Spain means customers can benefit from a high-quality, express parcels service within Spain, and also in the growing cross-border market.”

Royal Mail’s interests in Europe are growing and this acquisition should significantly balance the uncertainties of a market with overcapacity in the UK. With threats such as Amazon taking much of its deliveries in-house, the national postal operator has to run hard merely to stay still…

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