DHL 2008 Annual Report Download - page 71

Deutsche Post World Net Annual Report 2008
1 Presence in growth markets. We are increasing our presence in Asia, on the rapidly
growing Indian subcontinent, in the Middle East and in Africa. We plan to make
targeted investments in customer relationships in order to expand, for example, our
overland transport business within the Middle East and in Asia.
2
Industry-specifi c solutions. We develop industry-speci c solutions. For the pharma-
ceuticals industry, for instance, we developed  ColdChain, a temperature-
controlled pallet network for transporting sensitive products within Europe safely
and e ciently.
3 Modern infrastructure. We are harmonising our  and making substantial invest-
ments in a networked infrastructure. In November , we opened the largest
transhipment centre of its kind in the Middle East on , m² in Jebel Ali in the
free-trade zone of Dubai. Our customers use the centre as an intermediate storage
point when transporting goods between Europe, Africa and Asia.
Revenue and earnings performance
Satisfactory organic growth for freight forwarding business
All in all, our freight forwarding business saw encouraging growth in .
Revenue grew by .  to  , million (previous year:  , million).  is  gure
includes negative currency e ects of more than   million as well as minor acquisitions
in the Global Forwarding Business Unit. Organically, our revenue grew by . .
Air and ocean freight volumes down due to weak market in fourth quarter
 e Global Forwarding Business Unit generated revenue of  , million
(previous year:  , million).  us, revenues grew by .  year-on-year despite
negative currency e ects. Organic revenue growth was . . Gross pro t in the busi-
ness unit totalled  , million. Our earnings from operating activities  increased
slightly despite the decline in gross margins and di cult economic conditions. We
succeeded in optimising both operating expenses and overhead costs on an ongoing
basis. If the restructuring provisions recognised in the reporting year are discounted,
earnings increased year-on-year.
Air freight volumes saw a slight decrease of .  in  nancial year  com-
pared with the previous year; this was followed by a stronger decrease, however, in the
fourth quarter . .  e decrease re ected the overall market, which declined by  
in the reporting period. In November and December alone, air freight market volumes
dropped year-on-year by .  and . respectively, due to the sharp deceleration
of growth in global trade. As a consequence, freight rates on many trade lanes expe-
rienced sharp declines and capacities were reduced. However, since fuel surcharges,
amongst others, were signi cantly higher than in , we nonetheless posted a revenue
increase of  . Our business remained robust in the Middle East, Africa and South-
East Asia in particular.
Group Management Report
Divisions
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