Forto secures $250m to accelerate international expansion

Forto, a leading provider of digitised freight forwarding and supply chain solutions, has raised $250m in a pre-emptive Series D investment round led by Disruptive. Also participating in the round are existing investors including Softbank Vision Fund 2, G Squared, Northzone, Unbound, and A.P. Moeller Holding. The current round places the company valuation at $2.1bn.

According to Forto CEO and Co-Founder Michael Wax, this earlier-than-anticipated investment will further advance the company’s plans to enhance its offering for customers on a global scale. “We recognise that this is an exceptionally challenging period for many of our customers. As our business remains well-funded from our previous round in 2021, this new round will simply allow us to accelerate the execution of our existing strategy, particularly on our geographic expansion,” commented Wax.

“It will allow us to further widen our customer offer, bring our technology platform support to customers in new markets, and capitalise on new opportunities as they arise.”

The latest investment comes just eight months after a June 2021 announcement of a $240m investment round led by Softbank Vision Fund 2. The new funding builds upon the company’s significant financial position, with the total investment raised over $600m to date. This fresh commitment from both new and existing investors serves as a clear validation of the company’s vision, robust business model, and successful strategy, which are all focused on building better logistics and supply chain experiences.

Forto is using its digital platform to simplify interactions, remove process friction, and increase visibility around the supply chain — in turn empowering customers to make smarter commercial decisions. It strives to make the movement of goods around the globe simpler and more certain, while simultaneously helping the logistics industry become more sustainable.

Disruptive, a leading technology investment firm based in the United States (Austin, TX), explained the opportunity it sees in Forto: “the last few years have presented significant challenges and well-publicised uncertainty around the worldwide movement of goods. They have clearly highlighted the need for further visibility and control across the supply chain, and for Forto’s transformative solutions,” commented Alex Davis, CEO of Disruptive.

“Forto has significant potential to drive real change and improve global logistics experiences for customers across industries and touching all sectors of the shipping industry.”

Forto has a worldwide presence with offices across Germany and Asia (including Shanghai, Ningbo, Shenzhen, Singapore and Hong Kong). In 2021, the company expanded its European presence with offices in Copenhagen and Aarhus in Denmark, Madrid in Spain, Rotterdam in the Netherlands. It also opened an office in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. In 2022, Forto plans to further expand its footprint to customers in Poland, Belgium, Sweden and southern Europe.

Forto will continue to grow the company, with the addition of further industry-leading expertise in technology and logistics and the expansion of the senior leadership team to underpin this growth. In addition to the appointment of logistics industry experts to lead its regional expansion efforts, Forto recently appointed Jochen Freese, formerly Chief Commercial and Marketing Officer for CEVA Logistics, as Executive Vice President of Procurement and Business Development.

The company will also continue to advance its work to make global trade more sustainable. It aims to make climate action easy for customers, which starts with visibility on emissions and information that empowers them to make impactful data-based decisions. The goal is for sustainable choices to become the default.

The transaction remains subject to statutory closing conditions and is expected to conclude in the next few weeks.