Cash transport now officially a one horse race
Friday, 28 November 2025
The cash moving business in New Zealand is now, with Commerce Commission permission, dominated by Armourguard Logistics (ALL), which acquired and has now placed its one-time rival ACM Logistics into liquidation.
Despite the fact the two parties had become one, all debts of ACM were assumed by ALL, and there are no outstanding creditors, ALL as a shareholder of ACM had resolved to put it into liquidation as a way of winding up the firm more quickly and completely, rather than just de-registering the company.
ALL chief executive Shane O’Halloran told The Post the company’s 136 or so staff had been absorbed into the ALL business throughout 2025, creating a combined company of over 300 people.
The move reflected “the financial pressures that have built up over many years and the need to align the industry with a sustainable operational and pricing model,” he said.
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Meanwhile, services provided to ACM customers would continue, and no interruption to day-to-day service delivery is expected as a result of the liquidation, he added.
The Reserve Bank had been notified of the ACM liquidation and of ALL’s service-continuity plans.
Back story
In October last year, the Commerce Commission agreed Evergreen Holdings, through its wholly owned subsidiary, Armourguard Security, could purchase ACM, which was part of Australia’s Linfox Armourguard Group, essentially turning two competitors in the cash-in-transit business into one operator, albeit with distinct brands.
Cash-in-transit services are the transport, management and processing of bulk cash for banks and other organisations, as well as the replenishment of ATMs and bulk cash storage and management. Precious cargo services meanwhile involve the secure storage and transport of precious or high value cargo such as foreign currency, bullion and other valuables. Both companies provided these services.
The decision to allow Evergreen to buy ACM for an unspecified amount boiled down to the fact one or other would have likely ceased operations in any case, given the size of the market and the expense involved in shifting cash, and so there would likely only be one operator in future in any case.
“As noted in Evergreen’s application, the relevant businesses of both Evergreen and ACM have suffered significant cash losses,” said Commerce Commissioner Dr John Small at the time.
“An ongoing decline in the use of cash and reduced demand for cash-in-transit services – accelerated during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the rationalisation of bank branches – coupled with inflationary increases in costs makes it difficult for two national wholesale cash-in-transit providers to be financially viable. Without the proposed acquisition, we consider that it is unlikely that both Evergreen and ACM would continue to provide cash-in-transit services in New Zealand.”
“Given this, we are satisfied that there would not be a substantial loss of competition or material impact on the price and/or the quality of cash-in-transit services with the proposed acquisition.”
Collective bargaining
Given there is a declining demand for cash, and moving it around is expensive, as well as the fact there is only one player rather than two for cash-in-transit services now, the country’s banks recently applied to the Commerce Commission for permission to collectively negotiate for a joint contract with ALL to have cash delivered to and collected from their branches.
But that was denied by the commission in the interim: “The majority of commissioners are not satisfied that the potential benefits of permitting collective bargaining would outweigh the potential detriments” Small said.
ALL is not in favour of the collective agreement idea, with O’Halloran saying there was no need for it - “it’s been business practice for decades in all industries that you sit down and negotiate with your customer or potential customer - that’s what we we started, that’s what we’ve been doing, and what we'll continue to do.”
But the cost to all clients would likely be higher, with ALL moving to an “updated pricing framework that reflects the cost structure required to maintain a robust, resilient and sustainable [cash in transit] network across New Zealand.”
Asked whether banks had any options now cash-in-transit was effectively a one horse race, O’Halloran said banks did have the option of taking the transit of their cash in-house, rather than contracting it out to the likes of ALL.