Acquiring cargo-partner of Austria to buy a European and Central-Eastern European base (2023)

Scale acquired, and the retention still to be proved

The cargo-partner acquisition can be read as the choice reached at the end of a structural limit: an overseas model built by stacking up offices alongside Japanese customers could not match the mega-forwarders of Europe and America on tonnage. The size of the sum committed — €845 million — is the reverse image of a fear that if the moment were missed, the supply of targets in the M&A market would thin out; and that the group moved on a decision of this scale barely a year after shifting to a holding-company structure suggests how firm its resolve had become.

Acquiring scale, however, does not automatically mean acquiring competitiveness. The FY2023 results, closing immediately after the deal, did not yet reflect the full fruit of the overseas business, and whether the effect of the acquisition can be made to stick — whether a base of non-Japanese local shippers can be turned into long-term earnings — is left to the management still to come. How far this break from the follow-the-Japanese-customer model changes the character of the group’s overseas business will be shown only by the record it goes on to build.