One of the biggest names in UK fleet telematics industry has been bought.

Masternaut UK - known here as Masternaut Three X – was acquired by Masternaut International, last week for what was described by insiders as a “significant seven-figure sum”.

The company has some 3,000 customers in the UK tracking 50,000 vehicles.

Following on from the Masternaut announcement, Cybit also confirmed that it is about to be bought.

The acquisitions add a degree of stability in a sector rocked by supplier failures, which have left fleets paying for hardware but receiving no telematics service as their providers went under.

With the financial backing of Masternaut International’s main shareholder, Hub Telecom - a subsidiary of the massive Aéroports de Paris group - behind it Masternaut is now in a strong position to cherry-pick ailing rivals.

“We are already looking at acquisitions,” Masternaut Three X managing director Martin Port told Fleet News.

“We already have some companies in mind. It is not like acquisitions are foreign to us.”

Over the past three years, the UK company made a number of acquisitions including Three X mobile solutions from GE in 2006.

Last year, it acquired internet service provider Fibre City and ICM Business Solutions.

However, these acquisitions were to streamline the business rather than of rival companies to increase Masternaut’s customer base.

The shareholders of the UK business, which operated as a licensee to sell Masternaut products, effectively put the business up for sale 18 months ago.

There were offers from rivals, said Port who remains as MD for the next four years, but Masternaut International’s was the best and allowed the shareholders to “realise their investment”.

Port said the acquisition has created Europe’s largest telematics, mobile resource and fleet management organisation with 7,000 fleet customers and 120,000 vehicles.

“This deal creates the largest fleet tracking company in Europe,” said Port.

“It enables Masternaut International to accelerate its international growth and also enables us to better serve international clients.”

Key to this growth will not only be acquisitions, but also new products, as Frederic Dupeyron, the newly appointed chairman of the board of Masternaut Three X, explained:

“The new entity will benefit from the financial strength, reputation and international presence of Aéroports de Paris,” he said.

“In addition we will reap the benefit of reduced time to market for the next generation of mobility solutions plus the UK’s Three X Business Workflow Application Software will complement Masternaut’s business throughout Europe.”

The arrival of combined telematics and diagnostics systems, which provide fleet managers with key data on vehicle emissions and faults in real time, have significantly increased the attraction of telematics to fleet managers.

Masternaut here is planning to launch its combined system – ecocan - which is already being used by Arval in France.

Early next year, the combined telematics and diagnostic system, which connects remotely to a vehicle’s CANBus, will arrive on the UK market.