Every acquisition gets scrutinised on revenue and margin. Far fewer get scrutinised on whether the target’s warehouse can absorb your volume, or whether “in stock” in their system means the same thing as “in stock” in yours.
We work both sides of the deal: helping buyers see the operational risk before they sign, and helping the combined business integrate once they have.
We assess the target’s supply chain the way we’d assess our own client’s, compressed into the timeframe a deal actually allows. That can mean process mapping, capacity modelling, or a cost-to-serve breakdown, depending on what the deal needs.
Common warehouse automation challenges:
The target’s warehouse capacity is unknown against your combined volume forecast.
Cost-to-serve varies wildly by channel and region, and nobody’s benchmarked it against your own.
Supplier and 3PL contracts carry change-of-control risk that a financial audit won’t flag.
Two sets of systems that don’t talk to each other, with the integration cost still unpriced
Uncovering hidden efficiencies in the target’s operation that could fund part of the deal itself
From initial scoping to final integration – we’re here to help
Integrating two supply chains without breaking either one is where most of the value gets won or lost, and it usually takes longer than anyone budgeted for.
We’ve built the models for this before. An ASRS running toward capacity as new SKUs get added. Product ranges growing fast enough that the picking strategy needed rethinking week by week. A store network being asked to absorb an ecommerce category it wasn’t built to support.
Rarely was the answer a bigger warehouse or a bigger headcount. Usually it was a model that showed exactly where the pressure would build, so the business could plan for it in advance.
What this typically covers:
- Translating combined sales forecasts into warehouse and picking capacity requirements
- Identifying which stock, SKUs, or activities should move, merge, or stay separate
- Stress-testing the integration plan against different growth and seasonal scenarios
- Working with your C-suite and department heads to sequence decisions, not just recommend them
- A plan to protect customer experience through the migration period
The Trym Approach
Understand the target
We map the target’s supply chain end to end: warehouse operations, supplier base, systems, and data. This happens fast, prioritising for what the deal timeline allows.
Model the numbers
We build a capacity and cost-to-serve model using the target’s own data, so you can see where the business makes money, where it doesn’t, and what capacity headroom actually exists.
Stress-test the plan
We run your combined growth forecast against that model to find out where the pressure will build first, whether that’s warehouse space, pick capacity, or supplier terms.
Build the integration roadmap
We work with your C-suite and the target’s operational leads to sequence what integrates and what stays separate, so the plan survives contact with the real world.
Support through transition
Integration rarely goes exactly to plan. If you want us, we stay on to adjust the model as new information comes in, rather than handing over a report and leaving.
Results from the field
We’re past the point of theory – here’s what our work looks like on real world aquisitions and integrations:
Automated warehouse capacity. A retail ecommerce client with a 650,000 sq ft automated warehouse acquired a business to expand its category range. We modelled the impact of the added volume on ASRS pick capacity and identified exactly when it would hit its ceiling. From there we worked with the C-suite to weigh up their options: a night shift, more pick capacity, or a change to what got stored where. The output was a five-year strategy the business could plan capital against, not just a warning with no plan attached.
Fast-growing product range. An FMCG client’s acquisition brought rapid growth in sales volume and SKU count, putting real pressure on warehouse space and pick locations. We combined heat maps and week-by-week simulation of storage requirements to build a toolkit the site still uses to manage its own storage locations as volumes shift.
Cost-to-serve across a merged network. A UK retailer and wholesaler needed to bring down the cost of a growing ecommerce category while keeping their store network doing useful work in distribution. Cost-to-serve analysis by region, product category, and customer type surfaced a fifteen-point-seven percent cost-to-serve in the South East alone, two points above the network average, and pointed to which regional hubs were worth building and which stores were quietly underperforming.
Acquisitions get valued on the target, not on what the combined business could do together.
That gap is where we can uncover real value. A shared warehouse network, consolidated supplier volume, or a single set of picking operations can be worth more than the deal’s headline price, but financial data can only get you so far.
The businesses that get this right treat supply chain due diligence as part of the value case, not just a risk check. Understanding cost-to-serve, warehouse capacity, and contract terms helps you better understand the good and the bad of your combining businesses.
Getting your supply chain M&A right:
Knowing what a target’s supply chain can actually support
Spotting where the real business value sits
Walking into integration with stress-tested plan
Protecting customer experience
Making capacity and investment decisions with data
Latest in Supply Chain M&A
Frequently asked Questions.
Financial due diligence checks whether the numbers add up. Supply chain due diligence checks whether the business behind those numbers can actually keep running, and growing, once it’s yours. A target can have clean accounts and still be one 3PL contract or one warehouse manager away from serious disruption.
It depends on deal size and how much data the target can share, but we work to the timeline the deal allows rather than the timeline a full operational review would normally take.
Most reviews run alongside the wider due diligence process, not after it.
Supply chain complexity doesn’t scale neatly with deal size. A regional distributor or a small manufacturer can carry the same contract risk, capacity constraints, or single-person dependencies as a much larger target.
A lighter-touch review is often enough, but skipping it entirely is where smaller buyers get caught out.
Both, and ideally both on the same deal. Due diligence before completion tells you what you’re buying. Integration support after completion is where that assessment turns into a working plan. We can join at either stage, though the two work best together.
We tell you what we’ve found and what it’s likely to cost or delay, and let you and your advisers decide what to do with it.
Our job is to give you the evidence, not to make the call for you, but we’ll give your our honest expert opinion.
Absolutely. We’re used to operating as one part of a wider deal team, reporting into the same timeline and, where useful, feeding operational findings back into the wider valuation and negotiation.