Transplace buys Canadian 3PL in first ownership foray north of border

Transplace, a U.S.-based broker and third-party logistics provider, has made its first foray into Canadian ownership with the acquisition of Torus Freight Systems, a Richmond Hill, Ontario-based logistics company. Terms of the transaction, announced earlier this week, were not disclosed.

Tom Sanderson, CEO of Dallas-based Transplace, said the acquisition gives the company its first office north of the border. Transplace has managed some intra-Canadian and cross-border freight for years, Sanderson said in an e-mail.

Transplace, which already has sizable operations in the U.S. and Mexico, may use the Torus acquisition as a springboard to become more active in the still-growing North American transportation market, according to Sanderson. "We now have superb NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement] capabilities," he said.

Sanderson said as much in a statement yesterday announcing the deal. "Geographic expansion was our goal, and that's exactly what we have accomplished with this acquisition," he said, adding that the acquisition "perfectly balances our strong presence in Mexico."

Torus Freight Systems handles mostly Canadian cross-border and intra-Canada freight.

Privately held Transplace is owned by CI Capital Partners, a New York-based private equity firm. Its annual revenue is about $1.3 billion.

According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), a unit of the Department of Transportation, the noninflation-adjusted value of goods moving by surface transportation in the NAFTA trade hit $77.7 billion in September 2012. This marked a 35.6-percent increase from September 2009, which was shortly after what many economists mark as the end of the so-called Great Recession. The September numbers were down 0.1 percent from the same period in 2011, the first year-over-year decline since November 2009, BTS data show.