A major Spanish parcel logistics company, Transportes Ochoa, has gone bust and express firm MRWis facing a top-level shake-up as the economic crisis hits the country’s transport sector hard.
Ochoa, which specialised in freight transport, B2B parcel deliveries and logistics services,declared itself insolvent last Wednesday (June 27) at the Zaragoza commercial court. It was unableto cope with its debts and cash-flow problems. The company said in a message on its website thatlabour disruptions since then had prevented it from offering its normal services and it hassuspended operations.
Based in the region of Aragon in northern Spain, the company, which said it has some 1,200staff, 60 depots and some 6.5 million shipments a year, had been negotiating a restructuring dealwith unions since earlier this year, according to diverse Spanish media reports. Business newspaperCinco Días said that Ochoa made a loss of €5 million on revenues of €91.5 million in 2010.
Ochoa, founded in the 1930s, was seen as the third or fourth-largest parcels operator in Spainin a fragmented market, where leading operators include DHL Express, Seur, MRW and Azkar. Thecompany also has small businesses in Portugal and France, and is a member of System Plus, aEuropean freight transport alliance.
Meanwhile, Barcelona-based MRW is going through turbulent times with a management shake-updriven by unhappy shareholders, according to Spanish media. The company, with revenues of €565million and 40 million consignments last year, focuses on express deliveries through a network of1,300 franchisees with 10,000 delivery staff and 64 logistics centres. Its revenues have fallensharply from a peak of some €768 million in 2008 due to the weak Spanish market and a tough pricewar, according to experts.
Majority shareholders, the Corrales family (59%) and the Rillo family (15%), are negotiatingwith MRW co-founder and president Francisco Martín Frías, who owns 26% of the company, for his “orderly departure” from the business and as a shareholder. This move, according to an MRW statementcited in Spanish media last week, is due to “the need to seek a team capable of facing up to thenew challenges in such a competitive sector”.
The managing director, Francisco Martín Villanueva, the son of Martín Frías who took overmanagement of the company from his father in 2009, already resigned in May. In his place, the boardof directors has named three advisors “with broad professional experience to lead the change in MRWand who will manage the continuity and solidity of the MRW project”, the company statementadded.
The Spanish transport sector in general has been heavily hit by the country’s economic slump inrecent years following the boom over the previous decade. Operators have been forced into severeprice wars to win or retain business, putting strong pressure on revenues and margins, observerspointed out.
