BERLIN (Reuters) - Digital freight startup Sennder on Tuesday said it had raised a further $80 million from investors to expand its business, having decided against going public via a merger with a listed blank-cheque company. The extra money came through an extension of a venture round through which Sennder - Europe’s leading digital freight forwarder - had raised $160 million in January which valued the business at more than $1 billion. CEO and co-founder David Nothacker said the funding, led by Baillie Gifford, broadened Sennder’s investor base with a fund manager known for backing companies planning to float - which he said the Berlin startup wanted to do in a few years. Sennder had held talks with a number of Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) - listed shell companies that offer a more direct route to the stock market than a traditional initial public offering - but that option was now off the table. “With this extra funding, it wouldn’t make too much sense to go public via a SPAC,” Nothacker told Reuters in an interview. Sennder, founded in 2015, has emerged as a consolidator in Europe’s freight-tech sector, merging with France’s Everoad and buying Uber’s European freight business last year. Its technology platform matches full-truck loads with actual trucks, a process that has traditionally relied on small trucking companies working with phone, pen and paper. This type of broking business accounts for around a third of Europe’s $350 billion freight sector. Sennder has 12,500 trucks on its platform and expects to move more than 1 million loads this year. Nothacker said that Sennder was prepared to be acquisitive to address a shortage of capacity that has been exacerbated during the coronavirus pandemic by drivers - many from eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union - going home. Sennder had two or three M&A deals in the pipeline: “I would expect one, if not two, deals later this year,” he said. Reporting by Douglas Busvine. Editing by Jane Merriman Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.