Ocean shipping electronic marketplace INTTRA announced it has acquired Avantida, provider of empty container management services for ocean carriers. Avantida is headquartered in Belgium and currently conducts business in seven European countries.
Enhanced coordination of land and ocean container movements generates efficiencies and reduces costs, and INTTRA's entry into landside container logistics will provide additional value for existing and new customers. Avantida's core business - digitized, automated container reuse and repositioning - addresses a major challenge for ocean carriers, transport companies, terminals, depots, and other stakeholders. Industry experts estimate that empty container positioning costs the ocean shipping industry up to $20 billion a year, approximately 40 percent of handling costs.
"Avantida, an industry leader in digitized container logistics, has products and customer bases that are highly complementary to those of INTTRA. Acquiring Avantida advances our strategy of extending our reach into the intermodal value chain, enabling INTTRA to better serve our customers. With cutting-edge, cloud-based technology and a unique business model, Avantida enhances efficiency and delivers substantial value to carriers, shippers, and other landside transport companies," said INTTRA's CEO, John Fay.
Luc De Clerck, Avantida's CEO, said, "Together we can leverage technology innovation to digitize and transform a multi-billion dollar market that is central to global trade. INTTRA's global network will enable us to accelerate product adoption in Europe and around the world. Our combined offering will further benefit numerous stakeholders within and beyond ocean shipping and container logistics, including reducing CO2 emissions and congestion at ports and surrounding communities."
Avantida will operate as an INTTRA-owned company.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.