Australia’s largest bus network Kinetic is in exclusive negotiations to acquire Next Capital’s urban bus line business NZ Bus, in a deal that would entrench its position as the largest Australasian operator.
The 30-year-old NZ Bus is one of New Zealand’s biggest bus operators with more than 700 buses across its 13 depots. The company services Auckland, Wellington and Tauranga, mostly operating on behalf of local governments.
The sale price is understood to be just north of $NZ400 million.
Kinetic, which started out more than 40 years ago with a single bus in Melbourne, operates the SkyBus between Melbourne’s Southern Cross Station and Tullamarine Airport and is already the biggest mass transit operator in Australia and New Zealand. It has 53 bus contracts from 56 depots from Cairns to Hobart and Auckland to Dunedin.
Kinetic is backed by OPTrust, one of Canada’s largest pension funds with net assets of over $23 billion, and Australian investment firm Infrastructure Capital Group…see full article.
