One of the major pallet rental companies in Europe, La Palette Rouge (LPR), based in Toulouse France, was recently sold to Euro Pool System International by its previous owner, AtriA Capital Partenaires. LPR is the #2 private pallet pooler in Europe behind CHEP. Euro Pool System is known for operating a large pool of reusable plastic crates (RPCs). It has about 41% of the RPC market in Europe with the combined CHEP and IFCO enterprise owning the majority of the market.
This move positions both companies to compete against the combined behemoth of CHEP/IFCO in Europe. Combining the two entities will provide some synergies in terms of common customer base, opportunity to cross sell, rationalize service center infrastructure, etc. It will be able to offer an expanded product line to the fast moving consumer goods industry in Europe. Going forward, LPR will continue to operate under its own name as a division of Euro Pool System.
Euro Pool System operates in fifteen countries, in which its manages more than 620 million round trips of returnable trays per year. The company has a network of 45 service centers all over Europe.
LPR is operational in twelve countries handling over 45 million pallet movements a year across Europe. LPR earned revenues of 105m (US$138m) in 2010, which is still much smaller than CHEP’s European pallet business which had revenues of US$1.3billion.
