INTTRA announced yesterday that it has acquired Avantida, a European market leader in empty container management for ocean carriers. Avantida is headquartered in Belgium and currently conducts business in seven European countries.

Enhanced coordination of land and ocean container movements generates efficiencies and reduces costs, and INTTRA’s entry into landside container logistics will provide additional value for existing and new customers, a company statement said. Avantida’s core business – digitized, automated container reuse and repositioning – addresses a major challenge for ocean carriers, transportation companies, terminals, depots, and other stakeholders. Industry experts estimate that empty container positioning costs the ocean shipping industry up to $20 billion a year, approximately 40 percent of handling costs.

“Avantida, an industry leader in digitized container logistics, has products and customer bases that are highly complementary to those of INTTRA,” said INTTRA’s CEO, John Fay. “Acquiring Avantida advances our strategy of extending our reach into the intermodal value chain, enabling INTTRA to better serve our customers.” Avantida’s platform currently serves Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain.

“INTTRA’s global network will enable us to accelerate product adoption in Europe and around the world,” said Luc De Clerck, Avantida’s CEO. “Together we can leverage technology innovation to digitize and transform a multi-billion dollar market that is central to global trade. Our combined offering will further benefit numerous stakeholders within and beyond ocean shipping and container logistics, including reducing CO2 emissions and congestion at ports and surrounding communities.”

Avantida will operate as an INTTRA-owned company and customers should continue to use the same sales and service contacts. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

INTTRA is the largest neutral electronic transaction software platform and information provider for the ocean shipping industry. Over 700,000 container orders are initiated on the INTTRA platform each week, representing approximately 25 percent of global ocean container trade.