Jungheinrich acquires all shares of mobile robot developer Magazino

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Jungheinrich, a Hamburg-based intralogistics company, has acquired all shares of the robotics company Magazino from the founder and previous co-shareholders. These shareholders include Cellcom, Fiege Logistik, and Körber. 

Jungheinrich has had shares in Magazino since 2020, and in 2022 it increased its ownership to 21.7%. The new deal, to acquire all shares of the company, took effect immediately upon signing earlier this week. Both parties have agreed to not disclose the purchase price. 

Magazino will continue to grow and operate as an independent company within Jungheinrich. It will remain under the management of its co-founders, Frederik Brantner and Lukas Zanger as well as Dr. Moritz Tenorth. The robotics company will now have access to the Group’s global sales and service network. The Magazino brand will be retained, and the company will continue to work with other partners and customers. 

“The need for warehouse automation is growing constantly,” Frederik Brantner, CEO and co-founder of Magazino, said. “By steering robots in this complex environment, we have developed a unique expertise that we want to further expand. We would like to thank our previous investors for the trust they have placed in us and for the many years of successful cooperation. They have supported us strategically and financially to date and have made a significant contribution to the further development of our business. Together we have laid the foundation for the next chapter in Magazino’s success story. With Jungheinrich, we will continue to extend our intralogistics technology leadership and also expand internationally.”

For Jungheinrich, acquiring Magazino is a step towards strengthening its automation expertise. The company has already started to dip its toes into the mobile robot world with its acquisition of autonomous mobile robot (AMR) provider arculus in November 2021. Magazino is also an ideal addition to Jungheinrich’s expansion of its business with automated and autonomous vehicles. 

“We’ve been working closely with Magazino for several years now, we are on par with each other and communicate well. The chemistry is simply right. Now we are taking the next logical step in our cooperation and acquiring Magazino in full”, Dr. Lars Brzoska, Chairman of the Board of Management of Jungheinrich, said. “Magazino is a successful company with very good management and top experts in the market. It has outstanding software competencies and has developed solutions that have the potential to shape the future of intralogistics in the long term. In the Group, we will leverage these competencies to jointly drive the further development of innovative automation and robotics solutions.”

Magazino was founded in 2014, and currently employs around 130 people, meaning it has one of the largest mobile robotics development teams in Europe. The company offers a technology platform that enables logistics robots to operate in a mixed human-machine environment, allowing robots to intelligently navigate in warehouses as well as selectively pick up and transport needed objects. 

Magazino offers two mobile robots, SOTO, a mobile robot for industrial production that can autonomously transport materials directly to the assembly line, and TORU. TORU is a mobile robot that can independently store and retrieve small cartons in shelving racks, like shoe boxes. 

The company’s systems are already in use in warehouses of various industrial customers, online retailers, and logistics service providers. Magazino’s control software for robots in logistics environments is also already integrated in Jungheinrich’s EAEa, a fully automated low-lift truck.