Services partner for the meat industry
Export opportunities in the fresh and sliced meats industry were a focal topic at the 2008 German Meat Congress. Stefan Krautwurst-Leister summed up the decisive key factors for the long-term success of European food logistics from the DACHSER perspective.
Given the continuous decline in population figures and the saturated domestic market, growth in the German meat products sector is nowadays virtually inconceivable without exports. But selling meat products in the European core market takes more than just the good reputation of ‘made in Germany’ – among other things, reliable transport and logistics services providers. What characterizes a successful European food logistics provider was the subject of the presentation made by Stefan Krautwurst-Leister in front of 300 trade and industry representatives in Frankfurt/Main on 27 November.
In addition to physical prerequisites such as a pan-European network guaranteeing uninterrupted food safety in compliance with European standards, key factors are innovative capacity, an extensive range of services and the unrelenting search for optimization potential, which he believes to be the key to success over the long term. In pure transport operations, it is almost impossible today to achieve advances in productivity. Time and money is for the most part lost on the periphery: at interfaces, in the flow of information and documents, in after-sales service. Or because manufacturers provide logistics as a core competence themselves.
In its European operations, DACHSER Food Logistics relies on a mix of own national companies – above all in eastern Europe – and market-leading partners in the respective national markets. This strategy has proved meaningful and efficient, from a risk and cost as well as from a performance point of view. The decision to branch out into new countries with Food Logistics is easier to take if DACHSER’s European Logistics dry goods business segment is already established there.
At nearly all of its German locations, DACHSER operates integrated warehouses to enable it to offer potential customers near-term contract logistics services for differentiated levels of performance and capacities. For shipments within Europe, it is possible to utilize the existing data interface without additional investment.
overview eLetter 01/2009
