Wallenius Wilhelmsen Group, the Norwegian-Swedish global leader in equipment and vehicle logistics, is leading a major funding round for Swiss founded start-up Equippo, a full service marketplace for used construction equipment. Using AI for price determination and inspection processes, Equippo will expand its market reach in Europe and invest in the further development of new technologies. The company also announced the launch of a new software product, enabling construction companies to reduce fleet costs and to improve their equipment fleet’s lifecycle emissions.
The used equipment marketplace known for its money back guarantee has been titled “Zalando for excavators” since it introduced its worldwide return shipping policy, allowing used equipment buyers to transact without typical risks in a direct online purchase. The tech company uses different technologies to enable complex international transactions, such as a final price calculator for worldwide high and heavy shipments and AI driven price evaluations. Founded in 2014, the company has expanded into Germany and France and has become an important disruptor of traditional auction houses, achieving rapid growth across Europe whilst the two largest market players are seeking regulatory approval for a merger.
The participating minority investors are the Wallenius Wilhelmsen Group and two leading Swiss Venture Capital firms, btov Partners and Venture Incubator. With the proceeds of this substantial investment, Equippo aims to further expand its market presence in Europe and develop a new software product for construction and rental companies. CEO and Co-Founder Michael Rohmeder: “Our price evaluation technology uses condition data from our inspection app and real-time market information. It’s already superior to other tools, and it’s an ideal use case for machine learning. Our new product will make this technology available to construction and rental companies, with a direct impact on their fleet profitability by optimising pricing and the time of sale.” The new software product will also provide emission monitoring functionality to measure and steer fleet emission levels.
Mike Hynekamp, COO of Wallenius Wilhelmsen group, comments on the recent start-up investment: “We are very keen to support disruptive start-up companies in the context of our lifecycle logistics strategy with such investments, as well as our experience. Equippo has built an amazing product, and we strongly believe their jobsite to jobsite approach has the potential to change the entire market and look forward to supporting with a new connection to our end to end logistics strategy”.