US Rail Freight Giant Completes Acquisition of Pentalver from Maersk Subsidiary

UK – US – Genesee & Wyoming Inc. (G&W), owner of rail freight group Freightliner, announced today that its subsidiary, GWI UK Acquisition Company Limited, has completed the acquisition of all of the issued share capital of Pentalver Transport Limited (Pentalver) from APM Terminals, the subsidiary of Møller-Maersk, as detailed in our December article when the railroad and logistics group announced its interest in the British based container transport and service company.

Headquartered in Southampton, Pentalver operates off-dock container terminals (most under long-term lease) strategically placed at each of the four major seaports of Felixstowe, Southampton, London Gateway and Tilbury, as well as an inland terminal located at Cannock, near many of the nation’s largest distribution centers.

In addition to providing storage for loaded and empty containers on over 100 acres of land, Pentalver also operates a road haulage service with more than 150 trucks, primarily providing daily service between the seaports of Felixstowe and Southampton and its inland terminal at Cannock. Pentalver also provides services related to container maintenance and repair (including refrigerated containers) and is one of the largest sellers of new and used containers in the U.K. The company has approximately 600 employees

The agreement will see Pentalver continue to be run by its current Managing Director, Chris Lawrenson, and will operate as part of G&W’s U.K./Europe Region, led by Russell Mears. In a statement G&W said:

“Pentalver’s operations are complementary to those of G&W’s Freightliner subsidiary, which is the largest provider of maritime container transportation by rail in the U.K. G&W expects that the Pentalver acquisition will enable G&W to (i) enhance its U.K. services by providing rail and road transportation solutions, as well as offering storage options at the ports and inland, and (ii) unlock efficiencies from shared services and enhanced asset utilization from Pentalver’s trucking fleet and Freightliner’s existing fleet of approximately 250 trucks that currently provide local collection and delivery haulage from Freightliner’s inland terminals.”

Genesee & Wyoming is one of the biggest freight operators in the world, with heavy emphasis on rail freight, and owns or leases 122 freight railroads worldwide that are organized in 10 operating regions with approximately 8,000 employees and 3,000 customers.

In the European region its primary subsidiary is Freightliner, the UK's largest rail maritime intermodal operator and second-largest rail freight company. Operations include heavy-haul in Poland and Germany, intermodal services connecting Northern European seaports with key industrial regions in Germany, and regional rail services in the Netherlands and Belgium.

For its part Pentalver has consistently proved itself to be an adaptable outfit capable of innovation in its chosen sector. This is illustrated by some of the projects the company has undertaken in the field of container conversions, the ultimate example of this being the ‘Pen Tavern’ pictured, the demountable pub which has starred at the last two Multimodal exhibitions and which it seems has now been put out to stud, capable of morphing into a different identity for any prospective customer wishing to hire it.