After 24 years at the top of the Polish project logistics company Best Logistics, Andreas Häfner has handed over the steering wheel to his loyal colleague Monika Foryś. Within the Haeger & Schmidt Group, Best Logistics covers the business area of special and heavy transport in Eastern Europe and the Baltic States and works closely with the HSL Projects division.
The retirement of Andras Häfner on March 15, 2024 marked the end of an era for Best Logistics. Because Best Logistics was Häfner’s “baby”. He founded the company in 2000 in order to better organize the growing number of project transports on the Polish inland waterways for HSL. Fortunately, the entire group can continue to use the expertise behind this. Because Häfner will be available to the Felbermayr Group, and therefore also Best Logistics, as a consultant after his retirement.
With the company for 17 years
In the heart of Szczecin, just 190 meters from the water, Monika Foryś is opening the BEST Logistics office. The new Managing Director with a team of seven employees still remembers well the first time she set foot over this threshold. “That was during my studies. For my master’s thesis on heavy cargo and special transport at the Maritime University of Szczecin, Andreas gave me specialist knowledge from the field.” Immediately after graduating, he was offered a job by the Managing Director at the time. That was 17 years ago. Foryśś worked her way up. “Forwarding assistant, dispatcher, forwarding department manager, authorized signatory,” she says, listing the stages of her career.
Image source: Best Logistics
Individual unit weights of up to 800 tons, paired with special dimensions – that’s all in a day’s work for Foryś and her team. Clients include the energy, chemical and heavy machinery industries. Best Logistics uses all modes of transport for shipments, with Foryś specializing in inland waterway vessels, which are used for around 30 percent of transports. Last year, it handled 23 shipments by barge, often in cooperation with HSL’s Inland Shipping and Projects divisions. While Best Logistics covers the whole of Eastern Europe from around Berlin, HSL concentrates on the river and canal network in Western Europe, with a strong focus on the Rhine and Moselle.
Best Logistics has built up particular expertise in the area of construction site logistics for power plants. In the past four months alone, the niche provider has implemented two projects for the construction of gas and steam turbine power plants in Ostroleka and Grudziądz (both located between Warsaw and Gdansk). Using the example of the power plant in Grudziądz, Foryś shows what such a project involves “as standard”. The gas and steam turbine power plant with a net output of 563 megawatts is scheduled to go online in 2025. “We organize the delivery of the key elements by barge, truck and self-propelled heavy-duty trailers. In this case, the highlights are a turbine (320 tons), a generator (380 tons), a transformer (354 tons), rotors and other modules,” says Foryś, outlining the large-scale project, with pre-planning sometimes starting up to a year in advance. Best Logistics regularly works together with the Austrian Felbermayr Group, which holds an 80 percent share in the company and provides the special technical equipment.
Foryś also picked out the example of Grudziądz to show that every project is different and requires creative solutions. In this case, a temporary ro-ro berth was built to carry out the transport by heavy-lift barge from Gdansk to Grudziadz. Best Logistics only covered the last few kilometers from the jetty to the power plant site by road transport.
