New Hermes Fulfilment CEO

Georg Rau will succeed Dieter Urbanke as Hermes Fulfilment chief executive officer on 1 January. Urbanke, who has held the top job at the Hamburg-based distance selling service provider since 2006 and worked for the Otto Group for more than 40 years, will be retiring.

In a statement sent to Post&Parcel today (25 October), Hanjo Schneider, member of the executive board for services of the Otto Group and chairman of the supervisory board of Hermes Europe GmbH, said that Urbanke has “played a significant role in the successful development of the company”.

Incoming CEO Rau described his two main goals as being “focused around both driving our client-specific logistics services forward and actively supporting the retail organisations of the Otto Group with tailored fulfilment solutions which align perfectly to their ongoing growth strategy”.

Rau said that he will also focus on modernising the IT infrastructure. “Over the past few months we have already executed a number of large scale IT projects,” Rau explained. “We are currently rolling out our SAP based IT platform to other Hermes Fulfilment sites, providing the basis for flexible and scalable logistics processes. Only with a modern IT system landscape will we be able to satisfy the ever-increasing demands of our customers and keep up with the increasingly complex business models in the retail trade.”