Phoenix Equity Partners (“Phoenix”), a leading UK middle-market private equity firm, today announces an investment in Global Freight Solutions (Holdings) Ltd (“GFS” or “the Company”) alongside the current management team, led by CEO Neil Cotty. The deal is Phoenix’s third from its 2016 Fund and will provide GFS with additional investment to support the Company’s continued development and growth.
GFS is a leading provider of parcel and carrier management services to retail and B2B businesses in the UK. Using its proprietary technology platform, GFS arranges delivery of approximately 10 million parcels per year on behalf of over 300 customers, providing these businesses with access to over 1,000 different delivery options through approximately 50 carriers. Phoenix will work with Neil Cotty and the GFS management team to accelerate the growth of the business.
Richard Daw, Managing Partner at Phoenix, said: “GFS is a very well-respected business with a strong reputation in an attractive and rapidly growing market. Neil and his team have built a great company that uses its technology to provide an extremely valuable service proposition to its customers and carriers. We are delighted to be partnering with them at a time of continuing rapid growth and significant opportunity in the e-commerce market.”
Neil Cotty, CEO of GFS, commented: “Over the past few years, GFS has grown rapidly as e-commerce businesses increasingly recognise the importance of delivery options as a key differentiator and source of competitive advantage. GFS’s market leading technology platform allows SMEs to compete with the largest retailers on delivery, whilst our excellent relationships with our carrier partners allow us to offer the best possible range of delivery solutions to our customers, big or small. We are excited to be working with Phoenix – our partnership will give us the investment we need to ensure we remain at the forefront of our sector, and provide our customers with the very highest level of service.”
GFS is Phoenix’s third investment from its 2016 Fund, and second this year, following The Travel Chapter in April 2016 and Rayner Surgical in January 2017. In addition to deploying new capital, Phoenix returned £250m of proceeds last year, including the successful sales of Palletways, Edif and Karmarama.
