One might think that for our company with a 135-year history, ten years is a small period of time. But time is relative. Our ten-year anniversary with Felbermayr shows what can be achieved in this period. The Austrian family-owned company, which joined us as a shareholder on January 1st 2013, became the forerunner of our current growth and forward strategy. The trust, the short decision-making paths and the willingness to invest in our ideas decisively accelerated our development.
When I take stock today, these conditions have enabled us to set our course for the future. We have diversified our service portfolio, invested in company shareholdings, our own assets, port expansion and handling technology, digitized our process flows and made them climate-neutral. The financial leeway that Felbermayr has given us cannot be taken for granted. Over the past ten years, a total of almost 40 million euros has been invested in the concept that has made us a lead logistics provider for European multimodal logistics chains and heavy lift.
Felbermayr and we share the common idea of designing supply chains with our own assets within our network or with partner networks. Just one year after Felbermayr joined us, we took the first step in this direction by founding the joint venture HSW Logistics. Further milestones followed: in 2021, we entered into a joint venture with Felbermayr and PSA Antwerp to operate PSA Breakbulk N.V. in Antwerp. Together, we have adapted the terminal to the needs of project and steel logistics; just recently, a blue 750-ton heavy lift crane, Felbermayr’s corporate color, was installed there. A very special moment for us was the opening of the trimodal covered steel hub in Duisburg last year. We are also breaking new ground in the inland waterway fleet and have now invested in our own push barge combination.
All these individual elements are interlinked and follow our vision of further growth with a one-stop shopping strategy in cooperation with Felbermayr and partners. In summary, becoming part of the Felbermayr Group was the best thing that could have happened to us. It is simply fun to be able to shape the future of the company, adapted to the needs of our customers, with our agile, flexible and open shareholders and our employees.
We want to and will continue to grow.
Yours, Heiko Brückner
CEO Haeger & Schmidt Logistics