Polish courier and parcel delivery company InPost has announced the purchase of 95.5% of the share capital of British delivery service Yodel. PayPoint retained a minority stake of 4.5%.
The deal was executed through Yodel’s parent company Judge Logistics Ltd and cost InPost £100 million, Reuters reports.
The purchase was executed as a debt-to-equity conversion, with the funds transferred from an existing loan of £106 million, which now became a stake in the business. The total value of the deal, according to InPost CEO Rafal Brzoski, was £136 million, including debt refinancing.
InPost and Yodel began collaborating at the end of 2024: Yodel began delivering parcels from InPost parcel terminals to recipients’ homes. At the same time, according to Ofcom’s October 2024 report, Yodel was ranked second worst among courier companies for customer support. It is expected that the InPost deal will help improve the situation: the company will be able to process up to 300 million parcels per year, the number of connected online stores will exceed 700, and InPost’s share of the UK market will increase to about 8%.
Thanks to the concluded agreement, InPost will become the third largest independent logistics operator in the UK (excluding Amazon) after Royal Mail and Evri – however, the work of the latter also causes discontent among the British. In addition, Brzoska emphasized that his company plans to invest another 600 million pounds in expansion in the British market by 2029.