Pinc plans to expand yard management platform with acquisition of Wabtec TMS

The investment firm Accel-KKR said today it has acquired Wabtec Corp.’s shipper transportation management system (TMS) and will combine it with another logistics technology firm in its stable, the yard management software vendor Pinc Solutions.

Menlo Park, California-based Accel-KKR said the deal marks its second investment in the supply chain software space in two months, following its “significant" equity investment in Union City, California-based Pinc in June. At the time, Pinc said it planned to use the new capital to launch a series of strategic acquisitions and organic growth moves.

Accel-KKR called its latest move a “carve-out acquisition” of the Shipper TMS portion of the Supply Chain Optimization (SCO) software business portfolio owned by Pittsburgh-based Wabtec. Wabtec is the rail industry technology supplier that in 2018 forged an $11.1 billion merger with the rail manufacturing giant GE Transportation, a unit of industrial giant General Electric Co.

The Shipper TMS business—which includes the ShipperConnect and ShipXpress brands—provides cloud-based, multi-modal, shipment management applications for industrial shippers, carriers, logistics providers, and bulk terminal operators. Among its capabilities, Shipper TMS provides yard management, shipment visibility, rate management, and bulk inventory management from origin to the final destination.

The two deals are connected because Accel-KKR says that multi-modal TMS and analytics solutions—such as those offered by this Shipper TMS business—is one of several growth strategies in support of Pinc’s goal “to expand its digital yard management and transportation management solutions to help clients optimize complex supply chains.”

By merging Shipper TMS and Pinc, the investment firm said it will create a combined business that serves as a foundation for a Supply Chain Execution (SCE) platform focused on comprehensive transportation management software solutions for shippers. That platform will prioritize offerings that serve the origin and termination points in the supply chain with a specific focus on rail, truck, and terminal yard management, Accel-KKR said.

Following the deal, Pinc plans to consolidate the two brands under the ShipXpress name and merge it with the Pinc platform, bringing users more automation capabilities and one “single source-of-truth” from a transportation orchestration perspective, said Rafael Granato, Pinc’s vice president of marketing.

According to Granato, the combined businesses will then serve as a foundation for a Supply Chain Execution (SCE) platform focused on transportation management software solutions for shippers. That platform will prioritize offerings that serve the origin and termination points in the supply chain with a specific focus on rail, truck, and terminal yard management, he said. Combined with real-time visibility, electronic documentation, analytics, billing, rating, and carrier management functionalities, the SCE platform will be positioned to solve multiple transportation challenges in the supply chain industry.

Editor's note: This article was revised on September 16 to add commentary from Granato.