InPost on Tuesday bought the remaining 70% of the shares of two divisions of the British company.
The purchase concerns Menzies Distribution’s small package delivery company, Menzies Express, and Newstrade, the news distribution company, which has a significant share of the British market.
In July 2023, InPost purchased a 30% share in the parent companies of Menzies Express and Newstrade—Menzies Distribution Group. A third company in the group that focuses on large-scale logistics and warehousing will not be bought outright.
InPost was founded in 2006 and initially listed in Warsaw before moving to the Amsterdam stock exchange.
Brzoska, born in Raciborz in southern Poland, said his company would leverage the position of Menzies and its subsidiaries on the U.K. market.
InPost began doing business with Menzies in 2023 to ensure faster delivery of parcels to its growing network of 9,600 lockers in Britain.
“We immediately saw that Menzies was the right choice, allowing us better control over the logistics process. That is why we quickly bought a minority stake, and now, although we had an option for three years, we have bought the rest now,” Brzoska told Polish daily Puls Biznesu.
“The joint net revenue of the two businesses is almost £115 million, while profit at the EBITDA level was £14 million,” the InPost CEO said of his latest British acquisitions, which have cost a total of £110 million, including the July 2023 transaction.
The InPost takeover of the Menzies firms is the third major purchase by a Polish-founded company this year.
In September, Polish online travel company e-Sky bought the branding rights to what was once Britain’s biggest and oldest travel firm, Thomas Cook, for €35.5 million from its Chinese owners, Forsum.
The same month, Polish company Emtech, a specialist manufacturer of semi-trailers and low-loaders, bought British producer Andover Trailers.
Meanwhile, in 2021, Pepco, the owner of Poundland—a discount store found on many British high streets—chose to list in Poland.
Piotr Kubalka, CEO of J. Dauman, the consultancy firm that advised on Emtech's takeover of Andover, said the market has changed in recent years.
“A couple of years ago most of them [Polish clients] were interested in opening limited companies, subsidiaries and exploring the market, but now we have a lot of questions about taking over British competitors,” Kubalka told TVP World.
He said that Polish companies founded after the fall of communism have now grown large enough to afford to buy their rivals.
