Effective 1 February 2021, Imperial acquired 60% of e-commerce logistics business, ParcelNinja. ParcelNinja offers an outsourced warehousing and fulfilment business to South African online shops, using its custom-developed best-of-breed warehouse system and fulfilment network to ensure that clients benefit from scalable infrastructure and an innovative costing model.
“Imperial’s purpose is connecting Africa and the world and improving people’s lives with access to quality products and services,” says Mohammed Akoojee, Imperial’s group CEO. “Our digital strategy is a key enabler of our purpose, allowing us to build partnerships across our ecosystem, and to identify, pre-empt, integrate and own potentially disruptive technologies and businesses. Our digital strategy is both a driver of, and facilitated by, our ‘One Imperial’ strategy, and expanding our services into e-commerce, e-fulfillment and digital freight exchanges is an important component of this strategic pillar.”
ParcelNinja has been on a rapid growth trajectory since the company was started in 2014. Now picking and packing over 18 000 items for around 3 000 orders per day, the 6 100 m² warehouse in Johannesburg hosts upwards of half a million items on behalf of online shops across South Africa.
“Imperial brings strong logistics execution ability and an extensive client-base that is relevant and focused on time-sensitive transactions, enabling ParcelNinja to focus on its strength of rapid systems development and deployment,” says Akoojee. “Joining forces with Imperial is the next logical step in ParcelNinja’s journey to expand its reach while remaining sustainable. We are excited to welcome the ParcelNinja team on board and look forward to leveraging this partnership to expand our offering in both B2B and B2C channels for our clients and their customers.”