Cazoo has bought SMH Fleet Solutions, a vehicle preparation, logistics and storage businesses, for £70m
SMH turned in pre tax profits of £1.79m on turnover of £40.07m in 2019. It employees 300 staff and processes 70,000 vehicles a year from six vehicle preparation sites across 136 acres in Bedford, Gloucester, Throckmorton, Worcester and St Helens.
SMH carries out over 150,000 vehicle movements per year with a team of over 300 logistics specialists as well as operating an online wholesale platform for used cars.
The deal will double Cazoo’s overall vehicle reconditioning, logistics and storage capabilities in the UK with 11 total sites across more than 265 acres.
In a statement Cazoo said the deal will give it the capacity to recondition and deliver hundreds of thousands of cars per year and store tens of thousands of cars. Cazoo has sold 35,000 cars since launch two years ago.
Cazoo has recently launched an all-inclusive monthly subscription service for new cars as well as now buying used cars directly from consumers in the UK and is gearing up to launch later this year in both France and Germany.
Cazoo owns and fully reconditions all of its cars before offering them on its website for either delivery or collection in as little as 72 hours and has thousands of cars available at any time.
Alex Chesterman OBE, Founder & CEO of Cazoo said: “Given strong consumer demand, the only real constraint to our future growth is ensuring that we have adequate capability to recondition, store and deliver enough cars to keep up.
“By acquiring SMH, this helps solve that and de-risks our future growth by immediately doubling our number of vehicle preparation sites and significantly enhancing our team of vehicle preparation and logistics staff. I look forward to welcoming the SMH team to Cazoo.”
Tim Hudson, CEO at SMH Fleet Solutions said, “We’re delighted to be joining forces with Alex and the team at Cazoo and see this as a perfect fit for SMH. We have built one of the leading teams in vehicle preparation and logistics in the UK and are very well placed to support the remarkable pace of growth at Cazoo and help it deliver on its mission of providing the best car buying and selling experience in the UK.”