NOVI, Mich. & AMSTERDAM--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Lineage Logistics, LLC (“Lineage” or the “Company”), one of the world’s leading temperature-controlled industrial REIT and logistics solutions providers, today completed the acquisition of Grupo Fuentes, a major operator of transport and cold-storage facilities, headquartered in Murcia, Spain. The transaction was first announced on August 2nd, 2022.
Grupo Fuentes operates a fleet of over 500 vehicles and trailers, six logistics centers, a cold-storage warehouse, and value-added services supporting those facilities. It is also a founding member of Reefer Terminal, a strategic partnership to create an intermodal transportation platform combining road and rail cold-storage transport services.
With the close of the transaction, Grupo Fuentes and its 850 employees become part of Lineage. The Fuentes family will also take up leadership positions within Lineage and continue to drive the strategic direction of Lineage's operations in Europe. Rafael Fuentes, the CEO of Grupo Fuentes, will focus on developing Lineage's transportation service offering, where Grupo Fuentes already has a significant international presence. The Fuentes family will reinvest some of the proceeds from the transaction into Lineage, as a sign of their commitment to the business.
“I am delighted that we could move quickly from announcing the deal to finalizing it,” said Fuentes. "This allows us to begin the integration process between Grupo Fuentes and Lineage and realise the benefits that the deal will bring to our customers, employees, and the logistics sector in Spain and across Europe. Joining Lineage will allow us to achieve bolder ambitions than we could have achieved as a standalone company.”
Harld Peters, President of Europe at Lineage, said, “Spain is a major food producer in Europe, and our expanded presence through the acquisition of Grupo Fuentes is a key development in our plans to bring best-in-class cold-storage companies into the One Lineage family. This acquisition will connect the end-to-end supply chain for customers in Southern Europe and beyond, with facilities near food production centres and an extensive transport fleet that will allow us to offer customer solutions that extend throughout the entire value chain.”
Grupo Fuentes is headquartered in Murcia, with offices in Galicia, Madrid, Navarra, Valencia, and the Netherlands. The company counts some of Spain’s major food and retail companies as customers, with a significant share of the business providing cold storage, transport, and international transport services covering Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the United Kingdom. Grupo Fuentes has a cold-storage warehouse in Murcia with 60,000 pallet positions and plans to expand the site with an additional 40,000 pallet positions.
Lineage first entered Spain in May 2021, with the acquisition of warehouses in Navarra and Asturias from Frigoríficos de Navarra and Frioastur. The acquisition of Grupo Fuentes and its transport fleet is a complement to Lineage’s recent expansion of its European warehouse facilities.
Deloitte acted as financial advisor and legal counsel to the Fuentes family. Rabobank and Seven Lakes Partners acted as Lineage’s financial advisors and Latham & Watkins and Garrigues were its legal counsels.
About Lineage Logistics
Lineage Logistics is one of the leading temperature-controlled industrial REIT and logistics solutions providers worldwide. It has a global network of over 400 strategically located facilities totaling over 2 billion cubic feet of capacity which spans 20 countries across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. Lineage has industry-leading expertise in end-to-end logistical solutions, an unrivaled real estate network, and develops and deploys innovative technology. This helps increase distribution efficiency, advance sustainability, minimize supply chain waste, and most importantly, as a Visionary Partner of Feeding America, help feed the world. In recognition of the company’s leading innovations and sustainability initiatives, Lineage was listed as No. 3 in the 2022 CNBC Disruptor 50 list, named a Deloitte US Best Managed Company in 2022, the No. 1 Data Science company, and 23rd overall, on Fast Company’s 2019 list of The World’s Most Innovative Companies, in addition to being included on Fortune’s Change the World list in 2020. (www.lineagelogistics.com)
