Feature, Freight News

Former RH Freight boss to buy Europa

[ August 16, 2013   //   Chris ]

Former RH Freight joint owner Andrew Baxter has bought Europa Worldwide Group, one of the UK’s largest privately owned transport companies. Europa employs 500 people at nine UK branches and also has an office in Hong Kong. Its 2012 turnover was £73m, and it carried about 500,000 consignments. It also offers logistics, air and sea freight services. RH Freight was sold to Kuehne + Nagel in March 2011.

Current Europa owners, Russell Keep, Andrew Kennedy and Grenville Turner themselves are all long standing employees of Europa who bought the business in a management buyout in 2007. Managing director; Russell Keep is buying a 10% interest and will become group finance director.

Europa said that the acquisition will enable it to maintain its independence.  There are no plans to change the name, and staff numbers are planned to rise soon due to further investment in the business, it added.

Baxter commented: “I have spent some time looking for the right opportunity and am very excited about the potential here at Europa. The company has an excellent reputation and a good track record and I want to build the business to become the clearly recognised, number one groupage operator in the UK. I also believe the company has great potential outside of its European operations, in air, ocean and logistics, and we will be looking at what we can do to further develop these businesses.”

He added that it would be “business as usual for the next few months whilst we take time to evaluate the current set up.  We already have plans to invest £1.5m in new IT…There is a strong branch network which could be boosted further with other new sites to give a denser coverage of the UK.”

Grenville Turner stated: “We’re very pleased that Andrew has acquired the business and the excellent team here at Europa will give him the opportunity to grow and develop it further.”

Andrew Kennedy added “He has a proven track record in our industry. A key factor for us is that the company will remain independent.”

Tags: Europa Worldwide Group, RH Freight