Europa’s verdict

In the latest in our series of interviews with leaders of the express and logistics industry, Andy Kennedy, managing director at Europa Worldwide Logistics, provided ‘A View From The Top’ for Mail & Express Review. Europa Worldwide Logistics is one of the largest privately owned transport and logistics companies in the UK. Since its formation in 1966, Europa has created a strong presence in 100 countries across six continents. The company employs more than 400 people in the UK and operates over 475 scheduled departures per week; Europa delivers over 500,000 consignments a year across 30 European and Scandinavian countries.

Europa’s services are structured over six operating divisions – European Express, UK Distribution, International Airfreight, International Seafreight, Project Forwarding & Showfreight Exhibition Services and 3PL Warehousing and Logistics. Europa prides itself on its ability to offer a “complete logistics solution, covering all their requirements, within our six operating divisions.”

The green shoots of economic recovery are evident across the world. Kennedy mentioned that this was also the case at Europa. He added that during the past six months of 2010, revenue has improved over the same period of 2009, but is still only back to 2008 revenues. This begged the question of how Europa intends to grow the business post-recession. Kennedy said: “One of the only benefits of a recession is that companies tend to look much harder at how they operate their business and how can they improve costs and services in a more competitive market. This is proving to be helpful to Europa in being able to offer companies, who have not used our services before, alternative methods of transportation aimed at reducing their costs without damaging expected service levels.”

Kennedy also insisted that as well as fighting the negative elements of recession, it is important to recognise the positives: “The main problems during 2009 were reduced volumes from existing customers and a constant attack on gross profit margins with increased costs and prices being driven down. On the positive side we have found that companies are more open-minded in discussing alternative methods and in changing what may have been very long existing arrangements.”

During the recession, much was made of customers across the world opting for a reduced cost deferred service. Kennedy said that this generally wasn’t the case at Europa: “There are individual cases where this has happened but the main pressure has been to reduce our rates whilst maintaining the same service levels. This is probably down to customers not wanting to reduce service levels to their customers in the fear of losing the business to a competitor.”

So in a short-term time scale, the Review asked what the single most important objective for the business is over the next 12 months. “Europa currently offers road, air, and sea logistics, UK transport and project forwarding. What we want to achieve is that our customers, both existing and new, use Europa for all areas of their supply chain and not just for what we are traditionally known for which is our European Express,” Kennedy stated.

Whilst mail volumes continue to fall, parcel volumes have been buoyed by the growth in e-commerce. How important is the growth in e-commerce to Europa? “Our E-commerce business over the past 18-24 months has grown significantly, especially to / from areas such as China and USA. We anticipate that over the next 3-5 years this business area will continue to dramatically increase in both our air & road divisions. It does have its challenges though and the simple part is actually moving the products. The challenge comes in providing IT solutions across many different systems and requirements.”

One point of interest the Review raised with Kennedy was how he plans to develop Europa further, internationally. “At Europa we are on a plan of expansion in certain areas of the world to get us closer to the suppliers/customers and control their entire supply chain for air and sea logistics, UK and European distribution,” he said. “In April 2009, we established companies in Hong Kong and Singapore and are now expanding our activities in these areas. Early 2011, it is our intention to establish companies in India and later in 2011 in the USA. We see this as an essential part of our expansion internationally and to get closer to the beginning of the food chain.”

The Review asked what partnerships does Europa have in place; and how important are these to the company? Kennedy said: “Increasingly partnerships are becoming far more important in providing a total package to our customers. These partners range from exclusive agents worldwide to companies who provide transport solutions to Europa. Without their help we could not expand into new areas of business/regions and help provide the door to door service that most businesses insist on nowadays.

Europa has carefully built up these relationships over the years with many of our European partners and transport providers having been associated with us for over 20 years. In addition to this, partnerships with customers are increasing where relationships with them are being based on finding solutions to their ever changing business profile and driving down costs with the saving being shared.”

One of the industry’s hot topics is that of the environment.  Kennedy stated that Europa is now pro-actively looking to become greener. “Europa is obviously not in the greenest industry, and whether air, sea or road, we rarely get any good green credentials. However, we are investing in the latest lowest emission rated trucks and are embarking on replacement of our trailer fleet to increase more double decked vehicles to ensure that we utilise the latest technology to reduce emissions which of course also gives us cost reduction. In addition to this we are investigating new green lighting / heating systems and are currently trialling a new warehouse lighting system which if successful we will roll out in our nine UK locations.”

There seems to be a well-thought and ambitious plan of action put in place at Europa. Exciting times lay ahead, especially given the company’s expansion strategy.

Andy Kennedy was speaking to Chris Dolan ([email protected])

This article was published in September 2010’s Mail & Express Review. To subscribe to the industry’s leading quarterly publication, please click here.