Lineage Logistics in Novi Completes Acquisition of Grupo Fuentes in Spain

Lineage Logistics in Novi, one of the world’s leading temperature-controlled industrial REIT and logistics solutions providers, today completed the acquisition of Grupo Fuentes, a large operator of transport and cold-storage facilities in Murcia, Spain.
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Lineage Logistics has completed the recently announced acquisition of Spain's Grupo Fuentes. // Courtesy of Grupo Fuentes
Lineage Logistics has completed the recently announced acquisition of Spain’s Grupo Fuentes. // Courtesy of Grupo Fuentes

Lineage Logistics in Novi, one of the world’s leading temperature-controlled industrial REIT and logistics solutions providers, today completed the acquisition of Grupo Fuentes, a large operator of transport and cold-storage facilities in Murcia, Spain.

Terms of the transaction, first announced on Aug. 2, were not disclosed.

Grupo Fuentes operates a fleet of more than 500 vehicles and trailers, six logistics centers, a cold-storage warehouse, and value-added services supporting those facilities. It’s also a founding member of Reefer Terminal, a strategic partnership to create an intermodal transportation platform combining road and rail cold-storage transport services.

With the close of the transaction, Grupo Fuentes and its 850 employees become part of Lineage. The Fuentes family also will take up leadership positions within Lineage and continue to drive the strategic direction of Lineage’s operations in Europe.

Rafael Fuentes, CEO of Grupo Fuentes, will focus on developing Lineage’s transportation service offering, where Grupo Fuentes already has a significant international presence. The Fuentes family will reinvest some of the proceeds from the transaction into Lineage, as a sign of their commitment to the business.

“I am delighted that we could move quickly from announcing the deal to finalizing it,” says Fuentes. “This allows us to begin the integration process between Grupo Fuentes and Lineage and realize the benefits that the deal will bring to our customers, employees, and the logistics sector in Spain and across Europe. Joining Lineage will allow us to achieve bolder ambitions than we could have achieved as a standalone company.”

Grupo Fuentes is headquartered in Murcia, with offices in Galicia, Madrid, Navarra, Valencia, and the Netherlands. The company counts some of Spain’s major food and retail companies as customers, with a significant share of the business providing cold storage, transport, and international transport services covering Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the United Kingdom.

“Spain is a major food producer in Europe, and our expanded presence through the acquisition of Grupo Fuentes is a key development in our plans to bring best-in-class cold-storage companies into the One Lineage family,” says Harld Peters, president of Europe at Lineage. “This acquisition will connect the end-to-end supply chain for customers in Southern Europe and beyond, with facilities near food production centers and an extensive transport fleet that will allow us to offer customer solutions that extend throughout the entire value chain.”

Grupo Fuentes has a cold-storage warehouse in Murcia with 60,000 pallet positions and plans to expand the site with an additional 40,000 pallet positions.

Lineage first entered Spain in May 2021, with the acquisition of warehouses in Navarra and Asturias from Frigoríficos de Navarra and Frioastur. The acquisition of Grupo Fuentes and its transport fleet is a complement to Lineage’s recent expansion of its European warehouse facilities.

For the transaction, Deloitte acted as financial advisor and legal counsel to the Fuentes family. Rabobank and Seven Lakes Partners acted as Lineage’s financial advisors and Latham & Watkins and Garrigues were its legal counsels.

Lineage Logistics has a global network of more than 400 strategically located facilities totaling over 2 billion cubic feet of capacity. The company’s operations span 20 countries across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.

For more information, visit www.lineagelogistics.com.