VOS starts acquisitions in Romania

The Dutch logistics services and international transportation giant VOS, with annual turnover worth more than 550 million euros, wants to enter the Romanian market through some purchasing offers. The first bid is aimed at a small customs operator, Socum Bucharest. “VOS officials have contacted us, through one of our partners they have acquired recently, in view of a possible sale,” says Florin Sterescu, chairman of Socum, a customs operator whose turnover stood at 1.2 million euros last year. “The Dutch are not interested in acquiring transportation companies, but rather warehouses. Socum owns warehouses with a total surface area of above 10,000 square metres”. Radu Dinescu, the general secretary of the National Association of Road Carriers of Romania (UNTRR), an organisation including the major players on this market, says there is some rising interest of European investors in the Romanian market, but they are still making shy steps in this regard. “This is a rather confusing period both for domestic players and for European ones. The Romanian market has not seen any spectacular moves as yet, unlike Bulgaria, where a major European operator has bought the second largest player on the market of international road freight carriers and radically changed the market. The Romanian market has several big domestic players”, says Dinescu. The Romanian market of international freight transporters was last year put at about one billion euros, some 20% higher as compared to the previous year. It is, however, heavily fragmented, as only 6 operators own more than 100 trucks. ZF