With effect from January 1st, the company has amalgamated four management regions into one, making ‘Region Europe’ the largest business unit of the DB logistics subsidiary, employing more than 40,000 of the total 65,000 staff. Chief Executive Officer of the new umbrella region is Ewald Kaiser, who also remains the Management Board member of Schenker AG responsible for land transport.
The 36 European national organisations are freshly allocated to 10 country clusters:
1. Germany and Switzerland
2. Nordics: Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark
3. France and Morocco
4. Southeast: Austria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Bosnia Hercegovina, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Serbia, Greece, Hungary, Macedonia, Turkey
5. Poland and Eastern Europe: Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus
6. BeNeLux: Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg
7. Italy
8. UK and Ireland
9. Iberia: Spain, Portugal
10. Russia
Jochen Thewes, Chairman of the Management Board of Schenker AG in Essen, said: “Our new structure in Europe will make DB Schenker Logistics more powerful and faster when it comes to making and implementing decisions. In these days of digitalisation and globalisation, this is a vital requirement. This centralization will allow Region Europe to pick up speed.”
Ewald Kaiser added: “Especially among global customers, there is strong demand to have access to Europe as one single area without borders. This is reflected in the new structure. Simpler and shorter decision-making processes will make it easier to come up with integrated logistics solutions which are geared specifically to the customer’s requirements and to implement them quickly.”
The streamlined structures are also expected to have a positive impact on costs.