DHL to move headquarters to South Florida

The express-mail company DHL will consolidate its two home offices in Seattle and Florida and move its headquarters to South Florida during the next 15 months.

“It is clear we cannot operate from two headquarters on opposite sides of the country over the long term,” DHL CEO John Fellows said Thursday in a statement. “Because of the pan-regional responsibilities of the headquarters, the optimal location for our headquarters is South Florida.” A final location has not been selected.

Seattle had been home to the central headquarters of DHL, which took over certain operations of Seattle-based Airborne Express in a billion-dollar deal in August.

The move will affect functions including human resources, marketing, public relations, and finance and operations support, the company said, but its sales, and pick-up and delivery operations will be unaffected.

How many jobs would be affected were not available Thursday evening, but Fellows said there would be “no immediate impact on staffing levels in Seattle.”

“We are still in the process of finalizing detailed staffing arrangements and integration plans, but Seattle clearly represents a large pool of employees with great talent and significant experience, and we expect that many employees will be offered the opportunity to relocate,” he said.

As part of its new moves, DHL will also integrate its information technologies systems into three regional platforms worldwide. The Seattle-based tech group will be transferred to Scottsdale, Ariz.

DHL is a unit of German postal service Deutsche Post AG and has 170,000 employees worldwide.