GLOBAL logistics company CMA CGM has announced the acquisition of British freight operator Freightliner. The terms of the deal, which is expected to close in 2026 subject to regulatory approvals, were not disclosed.
The purchase includes Freightliner’s British rail and road operations, inland terminals and the Freightliner brand. The company’s other businesses, Heavy Haul, Rotterdam Rail Feeding, and Freightliner Poland/Germany, will remain under their existing ownership, with Freightliner a subsidiary of Genesee & Wyoming, United States.
CMA CGM confirmed that Freightliner will continue to be run independently by existing teams that will “remain focused on its multi-user and multi-customer approach.”
Freightliner CEO, Tim Shoveller, confirmed that the company’s Intermodal business unit will become a standalone business within CMA CGM. He says that the Heavy Haul business, which carries bulk freight, will continue to operate but under a new brand.
“The acquisition of Freightliner, a leading rail freight operator, strengthens our intermodal presence in the United Kingdom, a strategic market for CMA CGM,” says Rodolphe Saadé, chairman and CEO of CMA CGM Group. “It enables us to connect sea, rail and road more efficiently, delivering better solutions for our customers. It is also a concrete step in expanding lower-carbon transport options, supporting both their needs and the decarbonisation of global trade.”
CMA CGM is headquartered in Marseille, France, and employs 29,000 people around the world. This includes 7200 staff across maritime, logistics and inland services in Britain. It carried 802,000 TEU to and from Britain in 2024 and transported 200,000 TEUs by rail and road in the first half of 2025.
Freightliner was founded as a subsidiary of state-owned British Rail in the 1960s. It was privatised in the 1990s and sold to a management buyout (MBO) team, and later acquired by Genesee & Wyoming in 2015. Genesee & Wyoming itself was acquired by a consortium of Brookfield Infrastructure and the Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC in December 2019 for $US 8.4bn.
