The battle for feeder supremacy has taken another turn with reigning champion X-Press Feeders lining up another acquisition. Splash understands that X-Press Feeders, part of the Sea Consortium group, is finalising a deal to take over Singapore-based NVOCC TransLiner.
TransLiner, led by Ashok Pillay, has a network covering Southeast Asia, India, the UAE as well as West Africa.
The acquisition, set to go through by November 1, marks a change of strategy for X-Press Feeders, which has traditionally been a pure shipper’s owned carrier (SOC).
X-Press Feeders has watched as rival Unifeeder, owned by terminal operator DP World, has gone on a massive buying spree of late – taking on Singapore-based FeederTech as well as a Korean NVOCC and many of the units of the Indian-owned Transworld Group. Once all these deals are concluded Unifeeder is on course to surpass X-Press Feeders as the world’s largest feeder operator, a sector that is rapidly consolidating.
Senior management at X-Press Feeders have yet to reply to questions sent by Splash earlier.
