Shifting sands for GDSK

Dusseldorf-based GDSK is having to face up to the restructuring currently at hand in the European market, following a 5 million euro fall in revenue on imports last year. With major business lost when German post office bought out Dutch freight forwarder, Nedlloyd last year, Karsten Daniels, general manager international, for GDSK, sees more and more import work, particularly from the large mail operators going in a similar direction.
“With LA poste taking a majority stake in DPD, it seems likely that other subsidiaries of the French post office will switch business into DPD’s operation.”
Daniels adds: “They have built their networks in Germany and are now consolidating. Eventually they will feed all the business into their own systems.”
Daniels emphasises that these changes are in the pipeline, and therefore cannot be ignored: “This is likely to happen in the next two years, and we will have to prepare ourselves.”
GDSK’s strategy is twofold. On the one hand it is in discussions with other players in the market over forming partnerships on the import side. Daniels hopes this will drive more growth on this side of the business, representing a substantial shift in the company’s focus,
Daniels says: “We are having to change the company’s structure, and will put more sales people to work on our export business.”
He adds that the target for growth in exports this year is 12 percent, while revenue from import work is expected to at least stabilise. Overall turnover last year was 14million Euros, so GDSK expects to recover some ground in 2002.
Daniels believes that recovery will be helped by progress being made in the German economy: “It is definitely picking up again. After 11 September, companies were not spending money, and generally cutting costs, but budgets seem to be returning and people are feeling much more secure.”