WiseTech Global adds SmartFreight to its acquisitions portfolio

Oct 26, 2018: Software solutions provider to the logistics sector WiseTech Global has acquired IFS Global Holdings (‘SmartFreight’), a leading parcel and LTL (Less Than Truckload) shipping software provider.

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.

Richard White, founder and CEO, WiseTech Global 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. 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.”

Ken Aitken, SmartFreight’s managing director said: “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.