Western European transportation company acquires a CEE cargo transportation company for 400M EUR through privatisation.
Extensive operational restructuring and organisational modernisation is required to improve profitability, increase synergies to return purchase price, and expand jointly into new markets in CEE.

High synergy expectation fuelled acquisition. The following actions were required:

• Optimise operational routes and cost allocation
• Merge international transportation businesses
• Expansion to new neighbouring markets
• Restructure 1/3 of the operational workforce
• Implement acquirer business processes
• Upgrade and modernise IT systems and admin
• Cultural adaptation to new owner structure

‘Joining Forces’ project team with 50+ members and 20 core-business initiatives was created, and synergies of 8M EUR were achieved after 9 months:

• Sales benefits by negotiating on joint routes
• Optimisation of current cooperation routes and elimination of handover points
• Entering into a new CEE country with a joint presentation and image
• Expanding backwards in the value chain