Selling a logistics or distribution business in the UK

You own a UK logistics or distribution business worth between £5M and £50M in enterprise value. A specialist 3PL serving food, pharma or e-commerce. A cold-chain operator. A freight forwarder with strong customs brokerage capability post-Brexit. A last-mile platform with the courier model worked out. Warehousing and distribution with long-tenor contracts. Marine logistics, port services, container leasing.

Our logistics clients have built businesses on margin discipline, customer trust and operational reliability — not on hype. The buyers who pay properly for that look like one of three things: large UK and European logistics groups buying capability or geographic fill-in, PE consolidators rolling up specialist segments, and increasingly, infrastructure-style investors hunting predictable yield in cold-chain and warehousing assets.

We typically engage 12 to 24 months before a target exit. That window gives time to address the things that matter most in this sector: fleet capex normalisation, customer concentration documentation, accreditation hygiene (BRC, ISO, MHRA where relevant), and senior team depth beyond the owner. We have recently completed a logistics exit — a cold-chain logistics and container leasing operator — so the buyer landscape is fresh and the live deal experience is current.

This is not the right fit if your business is below £5M EV, or if your operating performance is dependent on capex deferrals that buyers will see through immediately. Equally, if you are already in advanced bilateral discussions with one buyer and looking only for execution support, that is a different mandate and we will be straight with you about whether it fits Mastella's model.

Logistics buyers run a sharper EBITDA quality and capex normalisation pass than buyers in many other sectors. Five items consistently sit at the front of the diligence pack.

Customer concentration and contract tail. Anchor contracts representing 25–35% of revenue are not unusual in 3PL and contract logistics. What buyers want to see is contract tail (months of binding revenue forward), operational integration depth (warehouse layout dedicated to the customer, IT integration, embedded staff), and switching cost. The same percentage of revenue at 36 months of tail with deep operational integration trades materially differently to the same percentage on a rolling 12-month contract.

Fleet age and capex normalisation. Buyers value the cash earnings the fleet generates, not the assets themselves. A young fleet with sustainable replacement capex produces clean cash earnings; an aged fleet with deferred capex inflates headline EBITDA but does not survive diligence. Building a clean three-year capex bridge is, in our experience, the highest-return preparation work in logistics.

Operational metrics by unit, route or contract. Margin per route, margin per shipment, gross profit per pallet, cost per mile, utilisation per asset. The businesses that command premium multiples can produce these metrics with confidence at the contract level, not just at the P&L level. The buyers know which lanes you make money on and which you lose money on long before you tell them.

Technology stack. TMS, WMS, telematics integration, customer-facing portals. A strong embedded technology layer creates barriers to entry and customer stickiness, both of which buyers pay for. A logistics business running on spreadsheets and reseller software with no proprietary layer prints at the lower end of the multiple range regardless of headline EBITDA.

Accreditations and regulatory standing. BRC, BRCGS Storage & Distribution, MHRA (for pharma cold chain), ISO 9001/14001/27001, AEO for customs work, FORS where applicable. Each one is a barrier to entry and a marker of operational discipline. Clean audit histories with the relevant standards support premium pricing and faster process.

Our six-stage process runs senior-led from first conversation to completion. For logistics businesses, three things shape execution.

Operational diligence is heavier than commercial diligence. Site visits, customer references, capex review, accreditation audits, fleet condition reports. We build the process design around this calendar from the start, which is the only way to avoid the late-stage momentum loss that derails logistics deals more often than any other sector.

Buyer mapping is international by default. UK strategic buyers form one pool; European strategic logistics groups (Dutch, German, French) form a deeper one; PE consolidators in cold-chain, 3PL and warehousing form a third; infrastructure-style investors in long-tenor warehousing and cold-storage assets form a fourth. Our buyer mapping covers all four pools as standard, supported by our proprietary technology layer for surfacing acquirer signals from licensed logistics data sources.

We have recent completed-transaction experience in cold-chain logistics and container leasing — see our work. That informs the buyer pool design, the diligence anticipation, and the negotiation work on every subsequent logistics mandate.