Alpine Air Express, Inc. ("Alpine" or "the Company"), a prominent regional air freight carrier in North America that provides key air infrastructure to a variety of integrated logistics operations, has announced the acquisition of Suburban Air Freight Inc. ("Suburban"). The transaction's terms were not disclosed.
Alpine has made two strategic acquisitions since joining AE Industrial Partners, LP ("AEI"), a private equity group focused on aerospace, defense and government services, space, power and utility services, and specialty industrial industries. Alpine also bought Great Lakes Airlines' assets in 2020.
Alpine, based in Provo, Utah, is a major Part-135 air cargo operator with a long and illustrious history of providing safe and dependable air cargo transportation services to its customers. Alpine has a fleet of over 50 operating aircraft and a proprietary Supplemental Type Certificate ("STC") to convert Beechcraft 1900D aircraft from passenger to cargo configuration, offering a unique value proposition to its blue-chip customers including UPS, USPS, FedEx, and others.
Suburban is a Part-135 regional air cargo carrier based in Omaha, Nebraska that provides specialized air cargo services to DHL and other important customers. Suburban, like Alpine, primarily operates a fleet of Beech 1900s and has a well-integrated maintenance and operations team. Geoff Gallup and Jay Armstrong, members of Suburban's leadership team, will remain with the company to assist with the transition to the next phase and the merger into Alpine.
"Suburban is a leading regional air cargo carrier with a reputation for quality service and safety,The addition of Suburban and its talented team significantly expands our Company and its market position, enabling us to better serve our new and existing customers."
-Michael Dancy, CEO of Alpine Air.
Growing e-commerce activity, faster delivery requirements and supply chain complexity has increased the demand for large scale, reliable regional air cargo service providers," said Jon Nemo, Senior Partner at AEI. "We have invested significantly in Alpine, including this strategic addition of Suburban, to create a leading provider of critical air cargo infrastructure capable of meeting this growing demand.
Safe and reliable service has also been our key focus while providing additional routes to better serve our customers, and as part of Alpine, we'll have greater resources to realize both objectives," said Mr. Gallup. "We look forward to partnering with both the Alpine and AEI teams as we expand our business. AIpine had BDO as its financial advisor and Akerman as its legal advisor. Suburban's legal counsel was Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith.