The Pennsylvania-based third party logistics provider (3PL) Logistics Plus Inc. has acquired a Ukrainian freight forwarding and logistics company, saying that growing its presence in the war-torn country will support both immediate needs such as emergency medical shipments and also long term rebuilding plans once the Russian invasion of the Crimean nation has eventually ended.
Logistics Plus said July 5 it had acquired Concord-Trans, a Kyiv-based firm founded in 2012 that has expertise in road freight transport, sea freight transportation, customs clearance of transport, and air delivery of goods. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Erie, Pennsylvania-based Logistics Plus had already operated a facility in Ukraine before buying Concord-Trans, but that 50-person site in Ivano-Frankivsk primarily served as an outsourcing office that performed business intelligence and development work, said Yuriy Ostapyak, COO for Logistics Plus and a Ukraine-born U.S. citizen himself. By adding Concord-Trans and its nearly one dozen in-country logistics professionals to that core, the combined operations are now moving physical cargo.
While the Russian invasion continues to rage, Logistics Plus plans to use its new capabilities to help mostly with urgent humanitarian and medical aid, which have grown more difficult to move since many western companies pulled out of Ukraine in the early days of the war, and a lot of Ukrainian companies and customers have since shut down, he said.
That strained business environment has also changed the flow of goods across Ukraine’s borders, since shipments of consumer and retail items have slowed dramatically, while demand soars for critical infrastructure such as generators and transformers to repair the country’s battered electrical grid, Ostapyak said.
“International trade is very, very limited [in Ukraine] right now, as Russia is bombing certain cities indiscriminately, as well as residential areas,” Ostapyak said. “But while that trade has dramatically slowed down, there is still a lot of logistics going on. We are currently live and moving cargo, so we can help Ukraine now and establish Logistics Plus as a brand name. And in the future, we want to be part of Ukraine post war.”
Prior to the acquisition, Logistics Plus had been using its U.S. warehouses to stock and containerize humanitarian goods, shipping them to a site in Poland where they could be dispersed locally. The company earlier in 2022 also established a charity called LP Ukraine Family Relief, which has raised over $660,000 to benefit Ukrainian refugees.
