It’s been a fruitful start to 2024 for refrigerated truck rental company Eurocold. In the space of the first week of February the business announced a new majority stakeholder in the French company Petit Forestier Group before revealing the acquisition of Western Australian rental company’s Damien Cole Group (DCG)’s refrigerated assets.
The latter put into motion Eurocold’s national expansion plans, with the Brisbane-based refrigerated truck leader taking a bold step into the western expanses of Australia with the acquisition.
“We’re really pleased with the acquisition of Damien Cole Group and how it’s gone,” Eurocold managing director Avraam Solomon told ATN.
“I’ve done a fair few acquisitions in the past, but this one was made easy knowing from the beginning that DCG is Perth’s market leader and has a great structure.
“The brand has engaged well with clients and has a good team that we’re looking to grow.”
The acquisition forms the beginning of Eurocold’s growth around Australia, with the brand now intent on increasing its asset base over the next six to 12 months by around 20 to 30 per cent. A smooth transition of DCG staff and processes in Perth has been key to hitting the ground running.
“The way DCG operates is not too different to what we do on the eastern coast of Australia, so it’s going well,” Solomon says.
“We’ve onboarded them onto our systems. We’re lucky that DCG has a very good facility in Perth that we’re using as our only site in Australia where we service and maintain all of our own assets onsite, so we’re learning a lot.”
From a cultural side, similar values have made the acquisition seamless. DCG has been in operation for nearly 60 years in Perth, supplying all forms of refrigerated vehicles from vans to 14 pallet trucks. Eurocold Chief Commercial Officer Kanani Draper says DCG’s dedicated refrigerated rental business means Eurocold has been able to continue its focus on ensuring the safe delivery of high quality refrigerated trucking units without a fuss.
“DCG has a strong value alignment with us as a business, so there’s increasingly been more similarities between us then just simply commercial,” Draper told ATN.
“DCG is a very values-led business when it comes to tackling acquisitions and customer relationships, so it’s very seamlessly integrated into our world.”
The DCG acquisition follows Eurocold expanding from Brisbane to Western Sydney courtesy of its first external depot in 2023. In last October, Eurocold also began providing trucks to the Victorian market, with Solomon heading the Melbourne-based operation alongside experienced transport operator Kevin Duong.
In May, Eurocold launched a new depot roughly 18km from Melbourne’s CBD in Laverton North, with the site providing rentals, sales and repairs to customers. Eurocold has also taken the keys of a new 8,677 sqm production facility in Brisbane’s City of Logan, increasing its headquarter floor space by 620 per cent.
This resulted in the next bit of expansion lying in Perth, meaning the DCG acquisition was a logical next step for Eurocold.
“Perth is the next place for Eurocold to expand its footprint,” Solomon says.
“It has been a process with Damien Cole and his team to come to this point where we acquire the refrigerated transport part of DCG. Damien will retain the other areas of his broad transport business.
“Eurocold is excited by the opportunities that exist with the DCG team that the market has become so familiar with and the additional opportunities that this brings for our business nationally.
“Our head office and additional state depots will allow DCG to streamline administrative, technology and product supply processes.”
Alongside this acquisition has been the news that the French-based Petit Forestier Group is Eurocold’s new majority stakeholder. Founded in 1907, the global business is in 20 countries and has more than 300 sites, bringing its experience of having 80,000 vehicles on the road and a team of more than 5,600 employees to Eurocold.
“Petit Forestier Group’s involvement gives us more opportunity to source and doesn’t change anything about how we operate day-to-day – I’m still the managing director and everything in Australia is still the same,” Solomon says.
“We now report back to them and can see what they’re doing globally, both in Europe and the US, to get a global look at the refrigerated rental space.
“We’ve learnt from them about what we can do in the future.”
This experience may be applied to Australia, but it can’t completely fit the unique market conditions in the nation. Solomon knows Australia includes plenty of smaller operators, meaning its second-hand market is more than 10 times as large as its brand new vehicle market.
With the majority of its trucks going to operators with only a handful of vehicles in their fleet, Solomon is looking at certain trends in the European rental market for inspiration.
“We’re interested in the second life lens and are looking at what European companies do with trucks in the second half, or second four years, of their lifespan,” Solomon says.
“Car rental businesses dispose of assets very early, while trucks tend to be more at the four year mark, but we think there’s a second generation product there that we can refurbish and take to a different market instead of just bombarding the market with the sale of second-hand vehicles that haven’t been serviced.”
Solomon is also keeping an eye on electric vehicles and their trajectory in Europe. Having seen thousands of zero-emissions vehicles on display around Europe, Solomon and Draper will visit the Hanover IAA Transportation 2024 show to meet with Petit Forestier Group members and discover more technology that can be implemented in Australia.
“Petit Forestier Group does what we do now and are at a level that we aspire to get to in Australia,” Draper says.
“They’re more a trusted advisor of ours, having been a business in the market for 100 years, so we have their wisdom to apply to our local business.
“It’s challenged us to become a world leader and best in class alongside a trusted partner.”
The next move for Eurocold is to continue expanding in Australia, starting with its upgraded site in Berrinba, Logan City. With more ambitious plans ready to go, Eurocold is expecting the back half of 2024 to match its productive start.
“We’ve moved into our new Berrinba factory, with production already ramping up in the first month,” Solomon says.
“We plan on having 42 vehicles come out of the factory in May, which is double what we’ve done historically.
“We’ve got more space, and that allows us to do everything we want to and more.”