Danish freight forwarder headquartered in Hvidovre outside Copenhagen, with roots going back to 1975 and 1989 and, by its own count, more than 5,100 employees in over 200 locations across 60-plus countries. It entered Portugal in October 2023 by acquiring FLS – Freight & Logistics Solutions, a Lisbon defence-logistics specialist, and now trades as Scan Global Logistics Portugal, Unipessoal Lda from offices in Lisbon and Matosinhos.
Scan Global Logistics (SGL) is an asset-light forwarder covering air, ocean, rail and road freight, contract logistics and project cargo, with a specialist Government & Defence practice built around a seven-year contract won in 2021 with the Danish Ministry of Defence that includes transport for the Arctic Command and work for the US military and NATO. That defence practice is what brought the company to Portugal. On 2 October 2023 SGL announced the acquisition of FLS – Freight & Logistics Solutions Lda, founded in 2014 by António Beirão, with two offices in Lisbon, one in Porto and one in Funchal. FLS held the national and NATO accreditations required for defence work, had built relationships with the Portuguese Ministry of Defence and the US Foreign Military Sales programme, and, SGL said, gave the group its 49th country and completed its footprint on the Iberian Peninsula, with Portugal framed as a gateway to Brazil and Portuguese-speaking Africa.
The business now operates as Scan Global Logistics Portugal, Unipessoal Lda. The company’s own location directory lists a Lisbon office at Rua Agostinho Neto 52B, headed by Managing Director Pedro Lourenço, and a Porto office at Rua D. Nuno Álvares Pereira 290 in Matosinhos, next to the port of Leixões. The Portuguese deal was one of a string of 2023 acquisitions — Sand Road Freight in Denmark, ETS Transport & Logistics and ETS Fulfillment in Germany, Belglobe in Switzerland — as SGL pursued a dual strategy of buying regional specialists and opening organic offices in markets such as Romania, Kenya, South Africa and France.
SGL’s Portuguese entry is a defence-and-logistics story as much as a freight one: a Danish forwarder bought a Lisbon company precisely for its NATO-accredited military logistics capability, at a moment when Nordic and Portuguese defence spending, and the Nordic–Iberian tender flow that NorthSouth HQ tracks on its tenders page, are both rising. It also gives Portuguese exporters a Nordic-owned forwarder with offices at both of the country’s main ports and a direct line into the Scandinavian network.
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