Christian Salvesen is a major European supply chain management group providing innovative solutions for clients.

We are a UK-based company but generate nearly 50% of our turnover in mainland Europe and our strategy is to expand our operations there in response to a growing customer demand for Europe-wide services.

Our core market sectors are:

• Transport (automotive, building products, packaged chemicals, DIY, manufactured products)
• Food (frozen, chilled, ambient and foodservice)
• Consumer (apparel, textiles and home furnishings)

The European region

Europe is a large and attractive market:

• It has a population of some 460 million people and there are now 25 countries which are members of the European Union..
• Logistics outsourcing by companies is less developed than in the UK, offering faster growth prospects
• Clients are increasingly appointing suppliers on a regional basis so we are responding with a regional offering

Expansion

Our strategy is to fill the service gaps in our existing businesses throughout Europe and expand our operations through organic growth, alliances and partnerships and joint ventures. We already have joint ventures in Spain and Portugal (Danone) and Benelux (Dumeco) and we see these as an excellent basis for growth.

We have created Holistica, a Joint Venture with APL Logistics to meet our customers needs for a freight management capability for clients in China, other parts of the Far East and the rest of the world.

A differentiated strategy: in-market shared-user networks

We aim to replicate our market-leading transport networks across Europe. These are linked in-market networks that provide customers with a high quality, fast, flexible service, variable rather than fixed costs and an environmentally sound solution. Dedicated operations will continue to make up about 40% of our business and clients can obtain maximum flexibility through a mixture of both modes of operation.

In-house development of core information systems

Advanced technology underpins all time critical logistics operations and supplies real time information to clients via GPS links. A pan-European wide area network gives visibility of information across the whole region. Our team of transport management system and warehouse management system specialists develop core systems in-house in close co-operation with customers and we spend a total of %uFFFD10 million annually on this area of business.

Building partnerships with customers and moving up the value chain

Clients expect both service excellence from a logistics provider and the expertise to help develop their supply chain. Increasingly we work in partnership with clients to develop more efficient practices and new ways of adding value. We continue to move our own activities up the value chain and away from commodity areas, focusing on total supply chain solutions.

Creation of a single Christian Salvesen brand across Europe

Our vehicles operate under the single Christian Salvesen brand which we have rolled out across our European operations in all languages. In support of the brand we aim to provide a consistent, high quality 'Christian Salvesen' service anywhere a customer may work with us in Europe.

Future direction

We are steadily changing the business in line with our vision of becoming a leading provider of supply chain solutions across Europe.

Our transport network businesses in France, Spain, Portugal and the UK provide us with the building blocks for linked in-market transport networks. Over the last four years our transport services turnover has increased and we have refocused the business to offer a combination of dedicated and shared-user capabilities.

All our operations are backed by sophisticated information systems, often directly interfaced with those of our customers, and we will continue to push back technological boundaries to achieve efficiencies and improve customer service.

As more customers across Europe seek to reduce costs, our networks and shared-user expertise and expanding geographical coverage are putting us in a position to grow our business.