"It is naturally still difficult to assess 2020 by normal standards. However, we have responded to the increased e-commerce volume of our customers with a successful growth strategy with our services in the home delivery segment," emphasizes Jürgen Bauer, Member of the Management Board at Gebrüder Weiss, with regard to the positive developments in the first half of the year. "In addition, thanks to the extraordinary commitment of our employees, we were able to maintain the high service quality in end customer delivery even during the lockdown phase."

New building in the south of Vienna in operation

The number of shipments in Austria in the home delivery segment at Gebrüder Weiss grew from 173,000 in the first half of 2019 to 235,000 in the first six months of 2020. Vienna, where around a quarter of Austria's economic output is generated, is also the top priority in this business. The company is responding to this development by building a new transshipment hall at the Maria Lanzendorf site. "We opened the transshipment warehouse for the Home Delivery division in mid-July. In Maria Lanzendorf, we handle around 40 percent of the entire Austrian volume of shipments delivered to end customers," says Karl Meiringer, Maria Lanzendorf branch manager at Gebrüder Weiss. The construction costs for the modern logistics facility amounted to 6.8 million euros.

Plus also in many Central and Eastern European markets

In the markets in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Serbia, Gebrüder Weiss delivered almost 110,000 more shipments to end customers between January and June 2020 than in the same period last year. Hungary reached a six-digit number of shipments for the first time (100,000; an increase of 75 percent), making it the leader outside of Austria. With 85,000 deliveries (an increase of almost 47 percent), Croatia follows in second place in this country ranking. In view of this success, the logistics company will continue to expand its activities in Eastern Europe in this business and is also looking at new countries.