Partners Group backs China's Apex Logistics
Partners Group has acquired a 24.9% stake in China’s Apex Logistics from its majority owner Kuehne+Nagel for an undisclosed sum as part of an expansion plan.
It comes four months after Kuehne+Nagel, a Switzerland-based supply chain industry giant, acquired Apex from MBK Partners in a deal estimated to be worth $1.5 billion. MBK bought the company in 2015 for $84.5 million.
Apex is the second-largest air freight forwarder in China. Its management retained a minority stake following Kuehne+Nagel’s acquisition and will continue to run the company as an independent entity after the Partners Group investment.
The idea is to blend Partners Group’s private equity know-how with Kuehne+Nagel’s logistics experience to grow the company organically and through M&A. This will include the establishment of new freight forwarding routes and expansions into new verticals such as healthcare.
Digitization of the logistics industry plays a central role in the overall thesis. Kuehne+Nagel’s broader Asian agenda includes a joint venture with Singapore’s Temasek Holdings called Reefknot Investments, which invests in logistics technology start-ups.
For its part, Partners Group has recently invested $250 million in India’s Ecom Express, an e-commerce and TV shopping fulfillment provider. That plan involves building out supply chain capacities in automation and data science.
"We started following the development of Apex after identifying it through our thematic investing approach several years ago,” Sheng Liu, a managing director for private equity at Partners Group, said in a statement. “Apex benefits from the rise of cross-border e-commerce – a key transformative trend that has accelerated as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Hong Kong and Shanghai, Apex positions itself as one of Asia's leading freight forwarders, especially within trans-Pacific and intra-Asia trade routes. The company has around 1,600 employees across 41 locations globally. It generated revenue of $2.4 billion and gross profit of $339 million in 2020.
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