I roughly followed the steps above outlined by / above and was able to get my fastlane build to succeed.
Clean-up current build environment:
Remove AppStore version of Transporter (I think this optional)
Download and install the latest pkg file for iTMSTransporter from: https://help.apple.com/itc/transporteruserguide/en.lproj/static.html#apdAe41970bd
As this point you can either update your build configuration, or symlink the java binary into the right location.
Do one of the following...
Update your build-config (this is what I did):
Ensure that the following to environment variables are set in the build environment
export FASTLANE_ITUNES_TRANSPORTER_USE_SHELL_SCRIPT=1;
export FASTLANE_ITUNES_TRANSPORTER_PATH=/usr/local/itms;
To sym-link the installation:
mkdir -p /Applications/Transporter.app/Contents/itms/bin -- may require sudo or switching to root user (e.g. sudo su -)
ln -s /usr/local/itms/bin/iTMSTransporter /Applications/Transporter.app/Contents/itms/bin/iTMSTransporter -- may require sudo or switching to root user (e.g. sudo su -)
After doing one of the above, your build should succeed and you'll have a more simple bootstrap process for your Devs / build-machine that does not rely on mas or equivalent.