Freelancing and crowdsourcing marketplace Freelancer has acquired Channel 40, an online marketplace connecting freight owners with transport operators, and in turn launched Freightlancer.com.
The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, however were a combination of cash and stock in Freightlancer Holdings.
Freightlancer.com is a global marketplace for freight, shipping, and transportation, powering everything from consumer metro deliveries to enterprise haulage.
Freelancer CEO Matt Barrie said, “The acquisition of Channel 40 and the launch of Freightlancer.com represent the first productised vertical for Freelancer.com, specialising in end-to-end solutions within a single job area.”
“This builds on our Local Jobs offering and taps into the the Freelancer.com API, delivering a global pool of liquidity for the freight logistics industry, around the world.”
Channel 40 was launched in 2016 by mining executive Tom Cavanagh. With Cavanagh also the founder and CEO of EMS Group, an underground mining and tunnelling service provider, Channel 40’s primary markets are the construction, mining, tunnelling, rail, and oil and gas industries.
With over 6,000 freight operators in its marketplace, Channel 40 shipped over $4.5 million of freight within Asia Pacific and to the US and Europe over the last 12 months.
Josh Mullens, chief executive of Channel 40, said the company is thrilled to be joining Freightlancer.
“Our business and global domain expertise in transportation, shipping and logistics, combined with the global scale of the Freelancer.com and Escrow.com businesses is a phenomenal combination,” he said.
The acquisition follows Freelancer Group last month delivering its quarterly cash flow statement to the ASX.
With Freelancer.com hitting 30,000,000 registered users in the quarter, the company stated that gross marketplace volume grew to $32 million for the quarter.
It also reported that the platform had begun to recover from the drop in membership fees that had “been the primary drag on revenue” in recent periods. The company stated it had made a conscious decision to cancel paid memberships of customers who weren’t receiving value from their plans, and promote a lower end plan by default.
This decision removed over US$500,000 a month in revenue “from peak to today” from membership revenue, however Freelancer believes the new plans will bring more revenue and customer satisfaction in the long run, with better retention.
Image: Matt Barrie.
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