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How a freight forwarding company from Bavaria found a new warehouse with the click of a button

The freight forwarding company Gematrans from Nuremberg was facing a challenge: after 30 years of using the same warehousing space, they had to find new storage within a very short time period. The logistics and transport company, with daily shipments from and to Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland, had to find a solution quickly and without expending too much effort while business was still running.

“Most people who aren’t from this area or involved in the industry have no idea that we have a harbour” says Oliver Möhring, authorised representative and procurement manager at Germatrans in Nuremberg, the second largest city in Bavaria. “But in fact, our harbour is basically the freight and logistics centre for all of south Germany. We really could not have picked a better place for our company headquarters.” Germatrans is located on Rotterdamer Straße in an industrial district of Nuremberg. They are a freight forwarding company focused on freight to and from Scandinavia. The company was founded in 1984 and initially provided storage and transport within Germany.

The focus switched to Scandinavia in 1999, when the current CEO of Germatrans, Jochen Rößler, took over. He had already worked in the Scandinavian market and focused on expanding the business in that direction. “Right, and that’s when things really got going,” says Rößler. What started with three company owned vehicles and six subcontractors in Scandinavia has grown to encompass 30 trucks, both company-owned and external. “And we currently have 25 employees,” Rößler adds.

No warehouse, but plenty of ideas

Until recently, Germatrans was lucky enough to be able to make use of a warehouse at their location that belonged to a business partner. However, due to structural changes it was no longer possible to make use of that space any more. They were in need of a solution, and quickly. “We have been TIMOCOM customers for almost 20 years, so our first thought was: how can they help.” Möhring was not expecting to find a warehousing exchange on offer within the Smart Logistics System. “The fact that we found it was really more of an accident – and a real stroke of luck for our company.”

He soon discovered that Germatrans could use the web-based TIMOCOM warehousing exchange to take a look at a variety of storage spaces in and around Nuremberg. There were many options on offer, and it was easy to send requests. Möhring: “The spaces on offer in the warehousing exchange were great, and easy to navigate. There were plenty of advertisements and lots of options for narrowing down the search so that we could find what we needed.” This was no accident. The chances of finding the right provider in a warehousing exchange increase in proportion to the number of users. The TIMOCOM warehousing exchange has by far the largest network on offer, with the most and most varied storage spaces in Europe. System users automatically have access to the warehouse exchange and therefore, potentially, to more than 7,000 warehouse providers from 44 European countries.

Quick solutions despite special requirements

“The responses came in really quickly. We only had to contact a few companies. Within a week we found our new warehouse, even though we had special requirements for the space,” says Möhring. These special requirements did not make it easy for Gematrans to find a replacement. One of their customers has to regularly send employees into the warehouse in order to retrieve goods from the stored palettes. And this was a problem for the large majority of companies. They did not want any external personnel in their warehouses. But Spedition Maierl, Germatrans’ new partner, had no problem with the arrangement. “If a company has a special request, we always check to see what is feasible, we never say no right away,” explains Mark-Oliver Maierl, CEO of the freight forwarding company. Christian Stark, authorised representative at Spedition Maierl, continues: “So far we have been able to satisfy most customer requests.” Including the one from Germatrans. The partnership only began this year, but is being expanded thanks to the positive experience both companies have had so far. From now own, all Germatrans’ warehousing needs will be met by the warehouse and logistics space belonging to Spedition Maierl. “Hopefully for the next 30 years,” says Möhring with a smile.

You can find out more about how to use the warehousing exchange and its functions in our sector article.