• M&A

vPOOL Sale to Faber Halbertsma Group (Pooling Partners/PAKi Logistics)

The Company

As a former portfolio company of the Frankfurt-based private equity firm Quadriga Capital, vPOOL Deutschland GmbH (now vPOOL Logistics GmbH) operates the largest open third-party pool for reusable transport packaging ("RTP") for the meat processing industry in Germany. With its core business of pooling red E-boxes and gray H1 pallets for temperature-sensitive meat and food products, the company is the market leader in logistics, scheduling, cleaning and inventory management of RTP. 

The company's pooling network extends to Austria, Italy, Poland and Spain. Here, vPOOL's RTP pool consists of both its own load carriers and customers' RTP. 

The company had to file for insolvency in November 2018 due to years of declining sales in the area of trading RTP as well as losses caused by the severely delayed ramp-up of a proprietary washing facility for RTP.

The Transaction

From the time of the insolvency filing, there was a risk that participants in the RTP pool would withhold individual load carriers due to an unclear allocation of ownership and no longer make them available to the RTP pool, thereby causing the entire RTP pool and thus the vPOOL business model to collapse. In addition to the general insolvency situation, the transaction had to be implemented under increased time pressure. 

Due to the special expertise and network of the ARGONAS team in this specific niche segment, a transaction could be successfully implemented in less than 2 months within the framework of a competitive, accelerated auction process and the business operations could be maintained. 

In order to maximize the purchase price and increase the transaction probability especially with regard to the critical business operations (RTP pool), parallel discussions and negotiations with potential investors took place for both an integrated (incl. the operational real estate) and separate divestment of the business operations. 

As of February 1, 2019, the Dutch landing gear specialist Faber Halbertsma Group ("Pooling Partners"), through its subsidiary PAKi Logistics, acquired the material assets (excluding operational real estate) as well as employees and customer & business relationships of vPOOL's pooling and logistics division in an asset deal to continue operations. 

Through the acquisition of the business operations of vPOOL with its Euro meat boxes and H1 pallets, PAKi Logistics can optimally complement its portfolio and expand and strengthen its position in the meat processing industry as well as realize synergy effects, especially in distribution.

Scope of Mandate

ARGONAS fully advised and supported the renowned insolvency administrator Joachim Exner of Beck & Partner as exclusive sell-side advisor in the preparation and implementation of the process.