WiseTech Global acquires Turkey’s Ulukom

WiseTech Global, a logistics industry software provider, has acquired Ulukom, based in Turkey.
Headquartered in Istanbul, Ulukom offers a range of logistics, customs, freight forwarding and warehouse support software in its Logistics Information Management System, designed to carry out financial and operational transactions on an integrated platform.
Ulukom’s customers include Çelebi Ground Handling, Panalpina and CEVA Logistics.
WiseTech Global’s founder and chief executive, Richard White, said: “As the bridge between Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and one of the EU’s largest trading partners, Turkey has long been a key market in the region and globally.
“Ulukom brings valuable experience, management and industry knowledge to the WiseTech Global group, which will deepen our reach in this important Eurasian market.
“Combining Ulukom’s Turkish logistics and customs expertise with our wider global innovation capabilities will help deliver better solutions to more logistics service providers,” White said.
Ulukom has delivered what a WiseTech statement described as “industry breakthroughs” to the Turkish market since 1987,including the first e-signature and mobile-based cargo manifest and detailed customs declaration, as well as Turkey’s first enterprise resource planning (ERP) system with vehicle load and route optimisation.
Ulukom’s managing director, Erkin Findik, saidd: “We have a shared vision with WiseTech to build out logistics and customs solutions that will enhance the supply chain and improve trade.
“As part of the WiseTech Global group we will be able to increase our development and deliver even higher productivity, integrated and automated solutions to our customers, which will benefit the broader Turkish market.”
Ulukom’s research and development (R&D) director, Ilker Pakten, added: “Ulukom has over three decades of logistics and customs management experience which, combined with the WiseTech Global group, will create benefits for logistics service customers of all sizes in Turkey and the surrounding markets in this region.”
Remaining under the leadership of Pakten and Findik, Ulukom’s operations will be integrated within the WiseTech Global group, while Ulukom is also to continue to deliver its software solutions directly to its own customers, as well as WiseTech’s integrated global logistics platform, CargoWise One.
CargoWise One enables logistics service providers to execute highly complex transactions in areas such as freight forwarding, customs clearance, warehousing, shipping, tracking, land transport, ecommerce and cross-border compliance.
WiseTech Global has made a number of acquisitions in recent months, including customs and logistics support providers  in France, Belgium, Ireland, North America, Australasia, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Taiwan.
Such purchases are in line, it explained, with WiseTech Global’s strategy of accelerating long-term organic growth through “targeted, valuable acquisitions across new geographies and larger, globally capable adjacencies”.
ENDS
Pic: Ulukom’s Ilker Pakten and Erkin Findik