WiseTech Global acquires Parcel shipping and LTL TMS solution provider, SmartFreight

Global logistics software group, WiseTech Global, acquires parcel shipping and LTL TMS solution provider, SmartFreight

Global logistics solutions group, WiseTech Global, today announced the acquisition of IFS Global Holdings (‘SmartFreight’), a leading parcel and LTL (Less Than Truckload) shipping software provider.

(L-R) SmartFreight Directors Kerry Holmes and Neil Page, and MD Ken Aitken

Headquartered in Sydney, SmartFreight offers multi-carrier shipping software solutions to over 3,300 customers across Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Ireland, South Africa and Asia. Its solutions address traditional bricks and mortar, B2C and B2B customers across all industries including organisations such as 3M, Mazda, Hyundai, Seiko, Epson and Pandora Jewellery, as well as transport and logistics providers such as DHL, Australia Post Group, Parcelforce, TNT, Toll Group, Aramax and Royal Mail. In Australia alone, SmartFreight processes over 50 million parcels annually.

WiseTech Global Founder and CEO, Richard White, said “As e-commerce continues its rapid exponential growth, the importance of omni-channel parcel and LTL shipping for customers, and the logistics industry globally, will increase by an order of magnitude.  We value the parcel logistics and technical expertise within the SmartFreight teams and their extensive coverage of parcel and LTL carriers and rates, with electronic connections to over 650 carriers, in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, the UK and South Africa.  These adjacent markets complement those covered by our other WiseTech businesses – parcel shipping TMS provider, Pierbridge, and specialist LTL TMS provider, SaaS Transportation, while our Gartner-rated specialist WMS, Microlistics, can beneficially partner with SmartFreight for e-commerce fulfilment domestically in these crossover geographies.

“Importantly, bringing SmartFreight into the WiseTech group will also accelerate the global expansion of our next-generation CargoWise One e-commerce offering for both international and domestic e-commerce fulfilments.  This innovative solution is in pilot with a major air-freight forwarder and will soon be launched globally for country-of-origin depot functionality – a great fit with SmartFreight capabilities.”

SmartFreight’s Managing Director, Ken Aitken, said “The days of global supply chain solutions working in regional silos are over and the exponential growth in international e-commerce makes the need for total supply chain visibility and transparency a necessity for our customers. Joining the WiseTech Global group allows us to plug our 21 years of experience in first and last mile delivery into their leading integrated global platform, which is being continually enhanced and expanded. This is a great opportunity for us to improve and scale up our shipping solutions and grow in key markets.”

SmartFreight solutions include SmartFreight, its flagship product for shippers of all volumes, SmartFreight Tracker to provide end to end visibility and SmartFreight Tracker4Transport for own fleet shipment tracking.  Underpinning its broad selection of products is SmartFreight’s ability to route optimise shipments through the selection of the best price, service time or lowest CO2 footprint to any destination.

SmartFreight also brings seamless integrations to over 170 WMS, ERP, e-commerce and accounting platforms along with dozens of online market places, such as Shopify, Magento 2, WooCommerce and PrestaShop to facilitate order fulfilment and tracking.

Remaining under the leadership of Ken Aitken, SmartFreight will continue to work with its partners to deliver innovative parcel shipping solutions to shippers worldwide.  SmartFreight will also have access to the 8,000 logistics providers across the world who utilise WiseTech’s integrated supply chain execution solutions.

Across 130 countries, CargoWise One enables logistics service providers to execute highly complex transactions in areas such as freight forwarding, customs clearance, warehousing, shipping, tracking, land transport, e-commerce, and cross-border compliance and to manage their operations on one database across multiple users, functions, countries, languages and currencies.

This transaction follows WiseTech’s other recent logistics solutions acquisitions in Argentina, Australasia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, North America, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey and Uruguay, and is in line with WiseTech Global’s clearly stated strategy of accelerating long-term organic growth through targeted, valuable acquisitions. 

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About WiseTech Global

WiseTech Global is a leading developer and provider of software solutions to the logistics execution industry globally. Our customers include 8,000 of the world’s logistics companies across 130 countries, including 34 of the top 50 global third party logistics providers and 24 of the 25 largest global freight forwarders worldwide¹. Our flagship product, CargoWise One, forms an integral link in the global supply chain and executes over 54 billion data transactions annually. At WiseTech, we are relentless about innovation, adding more than 3,000 product enhancements to our global platform in the past five years while bringing meaningful continual improvement to the world’s supply chains.  Our breakthrough software solutions are renowned for their powerful productivity, extensive functionality, comprehensive integration, deep compliance capabilities, and truly global reach.

The WiseTech Global group includes CargoWise One, ABM Data Systems, ACO Informatica, BorderWise, Bysoft, Cargoguide, CargoSphere, CMS Transport Systems, CustomsMatters, DataFreight, EasyLog, Fenix, Forward, Intris, LSP Solutions, Microlistics, Multi Consult, Pierbridge, Prolink, SaaS Transportation, Softcargo, Softship, Taric, Trinium Technologies, Ulukom, zsoft and znet group.

For more information about WiseTech Global or CargoWise One, please visit wisetechglobal.com  

About SmartFreight®

Founded in 1997, SmartFreight specialises in multi-carrier LTL and parcel shipping solutions. Customers include organisations such as 3M, Mazda, Hyundai, Seiko, Epson and Pandora Jewellery, as well as transport and logistics providers such as Australia Post Group, DHL, Toll Group, Aramax, Parcelforce, TNT, and Royal Mail.

SmartFreight provides its clients with an agnostic optimisation selection from their chosen transport providers, shipping by price / service / delivery time or CO2 footprint coupled with client branded end-end tracking visibility and final transport provider invoice reconciliation.

Headquartered in Sydney with distribution networks in New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland and the UK, SmartFreight has a team of over 50, together providing considerable logistics and technical expertise. 

SmartFreight has won 10 Australian Business Award Wins in the last seven years:

2016 - Technology Innovation
2016 - Product Excellence
2016 - New Product Innovation
2013 - Product Value
2013 - Product Excellence
2013 - Best Software Product
2012 - Product Excellence
2012 - Product Value
2011 - Best Software Product
2011 - Best E-Business Product

‘SmartFreight’ refers to the parcel shipping solutions provider, IFS Global Holdings Pty Ltd.

For more information on SmartFreight visit www.smartfreight.com

Contact information

MEDIA

Piers Shervington
+61 2 8001 2200
piers.shervington@wisetechglobal.com

¹ Armstrong & Associates: Top 50 Global Third Party Logistics Providers List, ranked by 2017 logistics gross revenue/turnover. Armstrong & Associates: Top 25 Global Freight Forwarders List, ranked by 2017 logistics gross revenue/turnover and freight forwarding volumes.