Ex-bpost parcels chief Peter Somers is building up his new Belgium-based e-commerce logistics firm Sprintpack with a logistics acquisition and an e-commerce partnership.
Sprintpack was launched last September with offices in Belgium and China offering e-commerce logistics services between Europe and China, including warehousing, parcel deliveries and webshop services. The new group, with a management team of former bpost managers, planned to cooperate with Belgium’s SD Group Logistics and various European partners for final-mile deliveries.
In November 2015, Somers acquired Plus Logistics NV, a Belgian fulfilment company with a 7,500 sqm logistics capacity in Sint-Niklaas, near Brussels. This company has been renamed SprintPack Logistics as from 1st January 2016.
This week the well-known and experienced parcels expert announced an investment in Zibbra, a Belgian IT company specialised in building webshops and automating business processes, including using cloud technology, to enable Sprintpack to strengthen its ‘one-stop-shop’ eCommerce service offering.
The Zibbra platform has already been integrated with the WMS (Warehouse Management System) of SprintPack Logistics and TMS (Transport Management System) of SprintPack, resulting in the possibility for a customer to contract with just one company for the webshop, storage, pick & pack and worldwide distribution.
Somers said: “I am convinced that the present know-how, quality and experience of Zibbra in eCommerce IT Solutions provides an additional means to the service proposition of SprintPack to provide web shops an excellent and wide array of logistics solutions.
“For eCommerce start-ups, retailers, e-tailers and FMCG companies we can truly provide state-of-the-art fulfilment solutions combined with our unique one-label parcel distribution solution to the entire world. The recently won contract in the FMCG industry proves that next to the pure players and retailers now also FMCG players will integrate eCommerce into their sales channels, an important development,” he added.
Zibbra will continue to be led by founder-CEO Erik Proost and Somers will support the growth and development of Zibbra as member of the Board. Somers was a member of the Executive Committee of bpost and headed bpost Parcels & International until 2014.
