Gebrüder Weiss has reported its financial results for 2019 and states an increase of 2% in net sales, generating €1.7bn in the past financial year. With consolidated sales of €1.15bn, the Land Transport and Logistics division increased sales by 2.1% Y-o-Y. A key driver was the growing demand in the home delivery area, with around 1.1m white goods, furniture and TV sets being delivered to end customers in Austria and Eastern Europe. GW has volumes of 385,000 shipments in Austria, making it a key market for the company.
The Air and Ocean Freight sector also increased by 1.3% to €380m. The tense market situation in air freight was offset by increased shipments in ocean freight and achieved growth especially in transpacific and transatlantic transports and further expanded its market share in the USA.
DPD Austria, whose co-partner is Gebrüder Weiss Paketdienst, was able to strengthen its market position, moving a total of 52m parcels, which corresponds to an increase of around 3% Y-o-Y.
“Despite difficult conditions, we developed positively in all business areas and were able to successfully use new technologies for increased customer benefit and more efficient processes. Demand is particularly gratifying in the home delivery area, where we have seen double-digit growth”, said Wolfram Senger-Weiss, CEO of Gebrüder Weiss.
The technological basis is increasingly more important and saw strong investments especially in the form of software solutions, such as real-time shipment tracking, digital freight measurement, the use of artificial intelligence in transport planning or the indication of the expected arrival time.
Gebrüder Weiss also invested in physical infrastructure. In Croatia, the Zagreb branch has been updated with a more modern logistics terminal; its largest location in Vienna has been expanded by a transshipment hall and it continued its development along the Silk Road, in Tbilisi, Georgia and in Uzbekistan. Making its total investment value last year €51m.
The number of total employees rose by 2.4% Y-o-Y, to a total of around 7,300.
In terms of sustainable transport solutions, since 2019 Gebrüder Weiss has been generating around 2.4m kilowatt hours of electricity per year with a 21,500 sq m solar system at the Vienna location. Together with the photovoltaic systems at five other locations, over 3m kilowatt hours of electricity are produced annually by solar energy alone. It has also added more gas trucks to its fleet in Austria, Germany and Serbia.
Source: Gebrüder Weiss
