A renewed focus on shipping Willi Betz

A RENEWED FOCUS ON SHIPPING

Willi Betz is an international forwarding and transport group based in Reutlingen, Germany. The company has recently divested one of its group companies in order to focus more on its shipping and transportation services, as Industry Europe reports.

Established 64 years ago as a one-man business run by Willi Betz, the company Willi Betz is now an internationally renowned forwarding and transport organisation with around 6000 employees in 50 locations throughout the world. Its transport fleet includes 2800 trucks and around 4000 semi-trailers.

A flexible, fast decision-making process, coupled with a strong transportation network allows Willi Betz to compete directly with major global players such as DHL, Exel and UPS. Improvisation and decisiveness are key elements to success.

The company is divided into three business units. These distinguish Willi Betz from the competition and also provide a cushion against problems or constraints in any one area. The biggest division is the Transportation and Freight Forwarding unit, accounting for 60 per cent of turnover. The unit offers a full range of specialist vehicles to meet any eventuality. These include tankers, refrigerated trucks, oversized load carriers and so-called ‘intermodal transports’ that is, waterborne vessels and railway trucks designed to take containers where this is deemed more effective and cheaper than road transport.

The second unit is the Trade Business Unit. The third division is Contract Logistics, which brings in 25 per cent of revenue. A new focus

In December 2011, Kajo Neukirchen GmbH and M Cap Mittelstandsfonds GmbH & Co. acquired the successful logistics provider LGI from Willi Betz. With this divestment, Willi Betz is planning to focus on and intensify the expansion of its shipping and transportation activities in eastern Europe.

Commenting on the move, Wolfgang Bisinger, a board member of the Willi Betz shipping division, said: “LGI has an excellent market position in the logistics sector with durable potential for further international expansion. The focus of Willi Betz, however, is the expansion of the transport and shipping activities in eastern Europe which

we now want to pursue more energetically than ever. Contract logistics currently offers few synergies which would justify the division remaining within the group. LGI has always been a very independent company without being enmeshed in the group’s other divisions.”

Two-way traffic

Reverse logistics is a growing market. Conventional logistics means having a distribution facility, bringing goods in, storing them and then sending them to the consumer or end-user. Reverse logistics is the other way round.

Offering clients a holistic service of this nature is a lot more complicated than booking a one-off delivery by road. First, the client’s logistics needs have to be analysed and defined. Then a process needs to be designed to match those requirements. This means discussing with the client the type of process they would like to have and the key performance indicators whereby the success of the process can be measured.

Once that’s done you need to look at implementation, ensuring that all aspects of the operation work together and dovetail seamlessly, avoiding the trap of having a collection of ill-fitting strategies that have to be run on a daily basis. The whole thing needs to be simple as well as sophisticated if it is to be 100 per cent reliable. The company achieves that simplicity through running a lean, tight operation of its own. For example, Willi Betz only uses a few makes of truck. The vast majority of the thousandstrong vehicle fleet are Chryslers.

Specific servicing and maintenance is indispensable when it comes to safeguarding a constantly high degree of reliability. The Betz group has a demand-oriented network of repair garages with state-of-the-art equipment along the major traffic routes. Qualified staff continuously trained to keep up to date on the latest technical developments look after the complex fleet, and ensure that it is always ready for operation. Spare parts warehouses keep a broad range of original parts and accessories for when the need arises. All service stations are integrated through modern IT and communications facilities. n