Europa buys Continental Cargo Carriers

Europa Worldwide has acquired Ostend-based Continental Cargo Carriers, the specialist part and full load operator.

Andrew Baxter, Europa’s managing director, said: “This acquisition is not about Europa expanding outside of the UK market. It is about strengthening our offering to and from the UK. The acquisition will not affect any of our groupage partnerships. Even in Belgium our groupage operation will remain unchanged and our aspiration is for all of CCC’s team to stay in place.”

Europa has ambitions to become a £400m business in the next four years through a mixture of acquisition and organic growth. Baxter said: “I’d like to see us completing a couple of acquisitions of this size a year for the next few years – continuing to strengthen our offering across all of our four divisions.”

Continental operates a fleet of 270 trailers, runs a 4,000 sq m warehouse and employs more than 100 people spread over Belgium, the UK and the Czech Republic.

Etienne Lefevere of CCC said: “We believe becoming part of Europa Worldwide Group perfectly fits in CCC NV’s strategy to further develop its successful part-loads service, implement top notch IT solutions to support further growth and provide the best possible service to our long-standing customer base.”

Europa increased turnover by 24 per cent to £144m last year while underlying net profit increased to £3.2m from £1.1m in 2016.