A transport and logistics company with EUR 18 million in revenue that, through a buy-and-build strategy, acquired three complementary businesses over four years and reached EUR 42 million. This case illustrates the real challenges of integrating acquisitions and capturing synergies.
Names, locations, and certain details of this case have been modified to protect the confidentiality of the parties involved. The figures and results are representative of the actual transaction.
A transport and logistics company founded in the late 1990s along Spain’s Mediterranean corridor, with 140 employees, an owned fleet of 85 vehicles, and revenue of EUR 18 million. Specialised in last-mile distribution for the agri-food sector, with a solid position in its region — but geographically limited and with an obvious ceiling on organic growth.
The founder — a 52-year-old entrepreneur, still energetic and ambitious — had reached a conclusion: to keep competing, he needed scale. His largest clients were consolidating their logistics providers, and companies that could not offer inter-regional coverage were going to be relegated to subcontractors. The EBITDA margin was 7.8% — EUR 1.4 million — reasonable for the sector, but insufficient to fund the expansion needed.
He contacted us after three years of trying to grow organically. He had opened a branch in another region which, two years later, was still losing money. Organic growth in logistics is slow and expensive: winning new clients in a territory where you have no route density means running half-empty vehicles for months.
The logistics sector in Spain presented — and continues to present — enormous fragmentation. Thousands of small operators, many of them family businesses with founders approaching retirement, with no succession plan, ageing fleets, but something very valuable: captive client portfolios and established routes.
We designed a growth-through-acquisition investment strategy with three principles:
Geographic complementarity. Each acquisition had to add a zone where the platform company had no presence, creating an inter-regional network.
Different clients, compatible sector. Seek companies serving the same client profile (food distribution, temperature-controlled) but in different markets, to enable cross-selling.
Integration before expansion. Never execute two acquisitions simultaneously. Each purchase had to be operationally integrated before considering the next.
The first target was a family-owned refrigerated transport company in Aragón, 32 employees, EUR 5.2 million in revenue. The founder was 67 years old with no successor. He had been looking for a buyer for two years without an intermediary, turning down offers from large multinational operators who wanted to buy the client portfolio and close the company.
Due diligence revealed a company with lower margins than the platform (5.9% EBITDA) but a portfolio of 45 clients in the Ebro valley — a region where our platform had no presence. The fleet needed renewal (estimated investment: EUR 400,000 over the first 18 months), but client contracts were stable and long-running.
The deal structure included an upfront payment to the founder plus an earn-out linked to client retention over 12 months. The founder stayed on as a consultant for six months, facilitating introductions of the new team to clients.
Integration was the smoothest of the three: same service type, same client profile, similar operations. Within six months, the Aragón branch was running on the platform’s systems and processes, and we had started offering Aragón clients the Mediterranean corridor distribution services — and vice versa.
The second was more complex. A full-service logistics company in the centre — Madrid and Castilla-La Mancha — with 55 employees and EUR 9.8 million in revenue. It did not just do transport: it had a 4,000 m² warehouse providing picking, order preparation, and inventory management services for food distributors.
The appeal was twofold: coverage of central Spain and warehousing capacity that broadened the platform’s service offering. The challenge: a company with a very different culture (more urban, more service-oriented than pure transport) and a management team whose integration was uncertain.
We negotiated a shareholders’ agreement with the existing general manager, who retained 15% of the subsidiary and remained as manager. It was the right decision: he knew the Madrid market, had personal relationships with the large clients, and his continuity was key to stability during the transition.
Systems integration was costly — three months of work to connect the ERPs — but the synergies began to appear quickly. The combined transport + warehouse service differentiated us from competitors offering only transport, and two large platform clients moved their stock to the central warehouse within the first nine months.
The third acquisition completed the map. A Galician family-owned company specialising in seafood product distribution, 28 employees, EUR 4.8 million in revenue. A very specific niche, with deep knowledge of the fish cold chain — an area where margins are higher than generic transport.
This acquisition was the most strategic and the least obvious. The founder was in financial difficulty: he had lost a large client representing 30% of his revenue and was fighting to survive. The price reflected that situation, but the risk was real — the company was undercapitalised and needed an immediate cash injection.
We spent the first three months stabilising: renewing contracts with remaining clients, incorporating seafood routes into the existing transport network (enabling full loads where previously there were half-empty journeys), and winning new clients by leveraging the national coverage we could now offer.
The theory of buy-and-build is elegant. The practice is hard. Some real lessons:
Four cultures, one team. Each company had its own way of doing things. The platform was rigorous and process-driven. The Aragonese company was informal and trust-based. The Madrid operation was commercial and client-facing. The Galician company was technical and product-focused. Unifying this without destroying what worked in each was the hardest challenge.
Technology as the backbone. The decision to migrate all companies to a single transport management system (TMS) was critical. It took 14 months and generated resistance in every team. But without a unified system, route synergies and fleet optimisation would have been impossible.
Retaining key people. We lost three middle managers during the integrations — people who did not adapt to the change or who refused to report into a different structure. Each departure hurt, because they took client and route knowledge that took months to rebuild. From the second acquisition onward, we implemented a retention programme with financial incentives linked to tenure.
Debt under control. The three acquisitions were financed with a combination of equity contributed by Blue Mountain and bank debt. Leverage peaked at 3.2x EBITDA after the second acquisition — the ceiling we had set. Waiting twelve months before the third acquisition allowed cash generation from the already-integrated operations to bring the ratio down to 2.4x before taking on more debt.
Four years after the first acquisition:
| Metric | Initial platform | After 3 acquisitions (year 4) |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | EUR 18M | EUR 42M |
| EBITDA | EUR 1.4M (7.8%) | EUR 4.6M (11.0%) |
| Headcount | 140 | 268 |
| Owned fleet | 85 vehicles | 178 vehicles |
| Branches | 1 | 5 |
| Coverage | 1 autonomous community | 8 autonomous communities |
| Active clients | 120 | 340 |
| Net financial debt / EBITDA | 1.8x | 2.1x |
The most significant figure is the EBITDA margin: from 7.8% to 11.0%. This is not merely a scale effect — it is the result of route densification (fewer empty kilometres), supplier consolidation (better prices on fuel, tyres, insurance), and cross-selling of services.
The company went from being a local operator to a regional leader with the capacity to serve clients demanding national coverage. The original founder retains 45% and remains at the helm as CEO — now of a company four times the size of the one he had five years ago.
In our experience, the buy-and-build strategy is one of the most effective ways to create value in fragmented sectors such as logistics. But its success depends on three non-negotiable factors:
Selection discipline. Not every company for sale is a good acquisition. Of the 23 opportunities we analysed over these four years, only three met our criteria. The temptation to “buy volume” is enormous, but every mediocre acquisition consumes integration resources that could be better employed.
Integration as the absolute priority. Post-acquisition integration is not a parallel project — it is the main project. Without effective integration, buying companies is merely accumulating problems.
Capital and patience. Synergies take longer than any business plan promises. Having a partner with patient capital — who does not press for a quick exit — is the difference between building something durable and constructing a house of cards.
If your company has the potential for growth through acquisitions and you are looking for a partner who brings capital, integration experience, and the patience needed to build something significant, let’s talk.
Founder of Blue Mountain
Over 15 years investing in Spanish companies with patient capital. Expert in business succession, corporate governance, and middle-market investment.
By Dirk Manuel Martens Jiménez
By Dirk Manuel Martens Jiménez
By Dirk Manuel Martens Jiménez
If you wish to explore a potential collaboration or present an investment opportunity, we invite you to contact us. We guarantee absolute confidentiality in all our conversations.