Basalt Infrastructure Partners is buying Unilode Aviation Solutions from EQT for an undisclosed amount.

EQT said its EQT Infrastructure II fund has agreed to sell Unilode, a company that owns and manages a fleet of unit load devices across more than 550 airports.

EQT Infrastructure acquired CHEP Aerospace Solutions from Brambles in 2016. This was followed by a corporate carve-out and rebranding to Unilode.

Unders EQT’s ownership, Unilode has grown to become the owner and manager of the world’s largest fleet of approximately 145,000 unit load devices, for use in the aviation industry, and owns and operates the largest global network for the maintenance and repair of unit load devices and inflight food service equipment.

Ulrich Köllensperger, partner within EQT Infrastructure’s advisory team, said: “Unilode is a great example of EQT’s value creation strategy. Under the leadership of a new management team and a complementary industrial board we have made significant investments into the company and implemented a customer-centricity and operational focused value creation plan.

“Unilode’s growth story is underpinned by strong megatrends such as the sharing economy and digitization and the mission criticality of its offering has been proven during Covid-19 when the business has shown strong resilience.”

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