DHL Express completed the sale of its same-day domestic business to Rico Logistics last week.

The same-day and parts distribution company said the deal, its first acquisition, has seen its fleet grow to 1,400 vehicles across 35 sites nationwide when the two businesses began to operate together on 1 November.

Rico’s director of sales and marketing, Martin Cheeseman, told MT.co.uk: “The investment by TVS has brought about some significant changes to Rico. These changes focus on growing the organisation, both organically and through carefully-selected acquisitions, here and in other territories across the world."

TVS Supply Chain Solutions acquired Slough-based Rico Logistics for an undisclosed sum back in October 2012.

He added that the acquisition of DHL Same Day "expedited our growth plans and has enabled us to leap-frog our forecasts by around 12 months".

"However, rather than getting ahead of ourselves we recognise that in order to sustain success growth needs to be carefully managed and, therefore, we fully intend to focus on the integration of DHL Same Day ensuring a smooth transition for staff, couriers and customers.," he insisted.

Cheeseman added that Rico had plans to strengthen its national business development team.  It is also looking at ways of developing a pan-European break-fix service which will be supported by its existing spare parts logistics infrastructure. Rico also intends to increase its sales focus on pan-European spare parts logistics across Europe.

DHL said the sale was completed on 31 October and there will be a transitional period where customers will continue to see DHL branding until the same-day business has been fully integrated into Rico's operations.

DHL’s same day international, time definite domestic and day definite domestic delivery services were unaffected by the sale.

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