Christian Agasse, CEO PAKi Logistics © PAKi Logistics

mfl: What trends are you observing in the pool management sector?
Agasse: Supply chain stakeholders who use pallet pooling want a faster and more secure flow of information, so it is important to bring digital offerings to the market that provide truly pragmatic solutions. Again, we must not forget that no matter how far digitalization has progressed, our customers ultimately need a physical pallet in the right place and of the right quality. In pallet pooling, the quality of the pallet is becoming increasingly important in order to meet the growing demands of automated warehouses. Every day, we try to make market players aware that a Euro pallet in an open pool, professionally managed by a pooling specialist like PAKi, can also meet the highest quality standards.

mfl: What is PAKi's assessment of 2019?
Agasse: In general, we can see that the tensions in the global economy are de facto weakening German exports and thus affecting the German economy. Despite the slight weakening of the German economy, PAKi was able to show healthy growth in its core pallet business both on the domestic market and in Europe. Over the last 15 years, PAKi has grown significantly and has developed from a German company into a European supplier operating in 27 countries. When Christian Kühnhold left PAKi to pursue his own entrepreneurial project, this was the signal for PAKi to rethink its organizational structure and prepare for the next decade and the next growth cycle. This also included a reorganization of the top management with the creation of a board with CEO, CFO, COO and CIO. As far as digitalization is concerned, we see it not as a path, but as a goal. That is why we are investing heavily in digital and IT solutions to make PAKi services even simpler and more user-friendly for our customers. Nevertheless, we never lose sight of our core competencies that have made us successful over the past 45 years. These include a people-centered service and our ability to deliver pallets and containers anywhere, anytime. We also have the largest geographical coverage and the largest network. The acquisition of vPOOL last year was a perfect fit with our growth strategy for open pool load carriers. We can pursue the same strategy here that we started with PAKi 15 years ago. We have the same focus on customer satisfaction, which has already brought us the first positive results in 2019. Another building block was the opening of a branch in Toulouse in order to better address the markets in France, Spain and Morocco.

mfl: What further developments is your
company planning for 2020?
Agasse: We are continuing to work on expanding the European network. At vPOOL, we are also working on new projects that combine our expertise in the food sector with PAKi's international network. But we are also changing locally: we have already reached full capacity at our headquarters in Ennepetal, which we moved into in 2010, so we are planning to open a second location nearby.