New journey ahead with deal to buy Europa in Newcastle

One of the UK’s largest privately owned transport companies has been acquired in a multi-million pound deal announced to staff today.

Europa Worldwide Group, who have an office at Bentnall Business Park in Washington, have been acquired by Andrew Baxter for an undisclosed sum.

The new owner plans to increase staff numbers in the near future due to further investment in the business, likely to be in procuring new sites.

Europa deliver air and sea freight and logistics services worldwide, and had a turnover of £73m in 2012, carrying some 500,000 consignments. They are headquarted in London.

Andrew Baxter was previously joint owner at RH Freight, another large independent operator who were sold to Swiss firm Kuehne + Nagel in March 2011.

Andrew is purchasing a 90% stake in the business and succeeds current owners, Russell Keep, Andrew Kennedy and Grenville Turner, who bought the business in a management buyout in 2007.

Andrew will also become managing director; Russell Keep is purchasing a 10% interest and becomes group finance director.

Andrew said: “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.

“It will 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 infrastructure to help improve efficiencies and communication.

“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.”