DSV Panalpina makes e-commerce growth play with a recent announcement of its acquisition of freight forwarder, Prime Cargo.

"DSV Panalpina acquires Prime Cargo, an international forwarding company which offers tailored freight, warehousing and logistics solutions. Prime Cargo is headquartered in Kolding, Denmark, but operates internationally and has activities in both Poland and China," the Danish transport and logistics company said.

DSV Panalpina bought out Prime Cargo from Mitsui-Soko Group in Japan.

E-commerce push

DSV Panalpina noted that Prime Cargo is a company that it has looked at "with much respect" for several years due to the company’s high degree of specialisation within selected verticals where DSV Panalpina has little activity.

"With Prime Cargo’s strong competencies in the field of e-commerce and fashion retail, of which the current fashion product setup in China plays an important part, the company is a perfect match for DSV Panalpina’s Danish Solutions division and Air & Sea division, respectively," it said.

The acquisition of Prime Cargo, it added, also offers "new opportunities" for both companies and their customers to benefit from a global network and new services, and existing DSV customers will get access to strong capabilities within e-commerce and fashion retail.

"Together, we can offer our customers much more. We will strengthen the product offerings to our combined global customer portfolios, which will have a global one-stop service with great value-adding services”, says Henrik Nielsen, executive vice president, DSV Air & Sea, Northern Europe.

Prime Cargo is renowned for its high degree of expertise within e-commerce. The company operates fully automated, state-of-the-art e-commerce warehouses, a technology that DSV is familiar with and recently installed in a new warehouse in Oslo, Norway.

"With Prime Cargo’s competencies onboard, DSV Panalpina and Prime Cargo will have the ability to accelerate the e-commerce effort on a much larger scale," DVS Panalpina added.

Marcel Blomjous, managing director, DSV Solutions, Denmark noted that Prime Cargo in Denmark is a renowned and leading brand in e-commerce and fashion logistics.

"It fits perfectly into the strategic portfolio of our Danish DSV divisions. In e-commerce we will offer state-of-the-art competitive automated warehousing services with ambitious growth opportunities," he said. 

Growth strategy

The managing director of Prime Cargo, Morten Høilund, welcomed the acquisition and is proud to become a part of DSV Panalpina saying the company gets to be part of a large-scale growth strategy.

“We are proud that DSV Panalpina values Prime Cargo’s strong competencies within e-commerce and fashion and that these will act as cornerstones in the growth strategy for the Danish organisations. We believe the acquisition provides a unique opportunity to link our industry focus with DSV’s global network,” Høilund said.

The transaction is expected to complete within 2-3 months subject to customary conditions, including clearance by applicable competition authorities.

Until then, both parties said Prime Cargo and DSV Panalpina will conduct their businesses as usual and independently.