Danish shipping company Norden has entered into an agreement to acquire Norwegian dry bulk operator Norlat Shipping, which specializes in the shipment of forest products and other bulk commodities, with main trading routes from Northern Europe to North Africa and North America.
Norlat has offices in Norway and Sweden, from where the company’s employees operate the business, based on chartered vessels with four to five monthly shipments on predominately handysize ships.
The acquisition sum is undisclosed and is subject to merger clearance.
Jan Rindbo, Norden’s CEO, commented: “With a customer-centric business and trading routes complementary to NORDEN’s, Norlat is a great fit with NORDEN. Norlat allows NORDEN to further cement our growing position within projects and parcelling, enabling us to offer our customers fully flexible solutions, as a global provider of ocean-based freight services for bulk and project cargo of all sizes.”
“Norlat is an extremely skilled parcelling business, increasing NORDEN’s access to the Northern European forestry trade, new customers and cargo. Matched with NORDEN’s size and access, there are significant opportunities for further growth and commercial synergies.”
Paal Henrik Boehaugen, Norlat’s Managing Director, said: “NORDEN’s success and growth has been an inspiration to Norlat, and we are confident that there are a lot of synergies that can be exploited. Our operations have many similarities, but almost no overlaps. Joining NORDEN will help us bring out the untapped potential that our team possesses, we are looking forward to starting this new adventure.”
To note, this acquisition will be Norden’s second, following the mid-2023 acquisition of the activities of Thorco Projects, which is today fully integrated into Norden’s Freight Services & Trading business unit, operating as Projects & Parcelling. Norlat Shipping will become part of the Projects & Parcelling team.