The world’s largest temperature-controlled logistics provider, Lineage Logistics, announced Tuesday the acquisition of Poland’s largest cold storage and logistics provider, Pago Sp. z o.o.
Through the acquisition, the Novi, Michigan-based real estate investment trust expands its European footprint to include Poland. Lineage will be acquiring six properties from Pago’s current ownership group, which includes Tonnies International Holding GmbH, in the transaction.
Financial terms of the deal were not provided.
“We are excited to enter Poland by acquiring Pago, which is known for its dedicated team members, the most modern network in its market and an entrepreneurial culture with roots as a family business — just like so many of the organizations we’ve embraced as part of our ‘One Lineage’ family,” said Lineage’s president of International Operations and EVP of Network Optimization, Mike McClendon. “The acquisition also expands the Lineage footprint to an increasingly important market for our customers and a region where we see opportunities to add capacity and implement new, innovative customer solutions.”
Lineage was founded and continues to be backed by private equity firm Bay Grove Capital.
“We are very pleased to partner with the current Pago leadership, who have helmed the organization since 2006 based on an ethos of reliability, quality and commitment to the customer while growing it to become the largest and most modern cold storage company in Poland,” said Co-Executive Chairman of Lineage and co-founder and Managing Partner of Bay Grove Adam Forste.
Pago’s current leaders, Adam, Patryk and Maciej Gosciniak, will remain on board to “help Lineage drive further growth in this critical and strategic region.”
“We couldn’t be more excited to be joining the Lineage family,” said Pago Vice Chairman Patryk Gosciniak. “On behalf of the leadership, I’d like to thank our entire team for their hard work in building Pago to what it is today. It is because of these efforts and commitment to our business that we have reached this milestone.”
Lineage continues to be a consolidator in global cold storage. The company announced in August that it had completed 10 acquisitions in the U.S., adding 24 locations and 5.5 million square feet of space. The company also completed the Emergent Cold transaction in June after picking up 14 facilities in a bid for Henningsen Cold Storage and most of the operating assets from food service distributor Maines Paper and Food Service earlier in the year.
In total, Lineage expects the portfolio to include more than 330 facilities and 1.9 billion cubic feet of temperature-controlled storage across 15 countries in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
Rabobank was Lineage’s financial adviser, with Latham & Watkins acting as its legal counsel on the deal. PWC Legal advised Tonnies.
