Second-largest cold storage company expands its footprint in the U.K.
Lineage Logistics Holdings Inc. said Monday it has acquired Yearsley Group Ltd., a leading temperature-controlled logistics service provider and frozen food distributor in the United Kingdom.
Lineage, which is headquartered in Novi, Michigan, already is ranked as the second-largest refrigerated warehousing and logistics company globally by the International Association of Refrigerated Warehouses (IARW). The deal further grows its footprint in Europe, where it had facilities in not only the U.K. but Belgium and the Netherlands as well.
According to the IARW list of the largest reefer warehouse providers, Lineage had 767 million cubic feet of reefer space, second only to Americold Logistics, which has about 934 million cubic feet of space. Yearsley says it is “the U.K.’s largest logistics service provider in the frozen food sector, as well as offering ambient, chilled and freight forwarding solutions.” It is headquartered in Heywood, outside of Manchester, England.
Lineage is owned by Bay Grove Capital, a San Francisco private equity firm. Yearsley is also privately owned. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Earlier this month, Lineage held a grand opening for its new refrigerated warehouse in the Port of Oakland, Cool Port Oakland, which is a joint venture with a local company, Dreisbach Enterprises.
Kevin Marchetti, one of the managing partners of Bay Grove, had hinted during the Cool Port opening an acquisition was in the works, noting that he and co-founder Adam Forste had started the company in 2008 with a single warehouse in Seattle and had grown to become the second-largest reefer warehouse company in the world with 127 facilities, 120 of which are in the U.S.
“If a few things work out, we’ll be the largest player in the world,” he predicted.
Greg Lehmkuhl, president and chief executive officer of Lineage Logistics, said, “Bringing Yearsley into the Lineage family enables us to better serve customers in the U.K. market and further reinforces our international logistics capabilities. We see tremendous alignment between our two organizations, not only in our capabilities to diligently serve customers’ extended supply chains, but also in our dedication to supporting a values-based culture that empowers our growing international workforce.”
Yearsley, which has been in business 66 years, has a network of 12 refrigerated warehouses in the U.K. It also has a fleet of 300 vehicles. Included in the transaction is Yearsley Food, a U.K. frozen food supplier that supports customers across retail, food service, food manufacturing and export channels.
Speaking during the opening of the Cool Port warehouse, Matt Hardt, the chief financial officer of Lineage, said the company views refrigerated warehousing as an “anticyclical type of business” that is expected to grow faster than gross domestic product in normal times. But even during the 2008-09 recession, he said, while other storage facilities saw business decrease or remain flat, Lineage grew at 3.5 percent.
“Why? People have to eat. So they might not go to a restaurant, but they may eat a hamburger. Maybe they’ll go to Walmart or Meijer instead of going out to a restaurant,” he said.
The new Cool Port Oakland facility, which is set up to accommodate the transfer of product from refrigerated rail box cars to ocean containers, is expected to be largely used by exporters of meat and poultry from the Midwest. Frozen fruit such as berries are another product the Oakland facility expects to handle.
While China is one of the markets those goods are headed to, Hardt said the company had not seen a diminution in business from Chinese retaliatory tariffs against U.S. exports.
Lineage Logistics acquires Yearsley Group
