New site, expansion plans - Gebrüder Weiss Hungary turns 20

Over the past two decades, GW Hungary delivered a total of 8 million consignments to almost every spot on the globe, and its fleet of lorries travelled 1 billion kilometres to deliver the 3.5 million tonnes of consignments assigned to the company. In Hungary, the company has so far implemented green field and technological investments worth over 6 billion HUF. 
The company opened its first office in Budapest in 1990 with 9 employees. One year later, the first 200 square-metre warehouse set up in Törökbálint, which continually expanded in the following, began to operate. In the upcoming years, the company was awarded ISO 9002 Certification, set up its warehouse logistics business branch and opened its air and sea cargo distribution division at Ferihegy Airport. The company developed so rapidly that it became necessary to launch the first green field investment. The 10.5 thousand square-metre logistics centre constructed by investing 2.7 billion HUF was handed over in Dunaharaszti in 2002, at which centre automatic goods transfer and IT technologies never before used in Hungary were installed. This enabled the dynamic development of collective Eastern European operations. Direct flights were launched to Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Croatia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Serbia and Montenegro.  
In 2005, Hungaroweiss Ltd. adopted the name of its parent company and continued to operate as Gebrüder Weiss Transport and Logistics Ltd. This marked the debut of another 3 years of intense investment activities, as an outcome of which warehouse logistics capacities in Dunaharaszti reached 25,000 square-metres in 2008. 
Gebrüder Weiss has always prioritised the development of its Hungarian subsidiary viewed as the expansion pillar of the south-eastern European market, which is why the company opened a 1000 square-metre site in Hajdúböszörmény in 2008 to provide more flexible services for its clients in the eastern region of the country. The market hit by the crisis heralded this move, and the site’s turnover increased by 50% during the most critical period of the crisis. In 2009, Gebrüder Weiss Ltd. inaugurated another 7,000 square-metre site in Szigetszentmiklós and the company will open its 5th warehouse and site in 2011 to strengthen its operations in Western Hungary.
As an outcome of ongoing market expansion, by 2008 the number of consignments distributed by Gebrüder Weiss exceeded an annual volume of 800,000. Alongside reliable and quality services, the company’s outstanding technological background is what made this development possible. Beyond handling consignments in warehouses with a barcode, when delivering consignments drivers use mobile barcode scanners with a GPRS wireless connection. Thanks to this system, it is, among others, possible to find the exact time of delivery and the customer’s name on the Internet within seconds, which is how clients are able to track the route of their consignment online. Through the cost reduction impact of these comprehensive logistics solutions, GW offers clients a competitive edge, since besides the necessary know-how, the company has a suitable network of contacts and sites for coming up with and implementing unique solutions.  
The 20 year-old Gebrüder Weiss Ltd. has been working with the same staff size, i.e., 220 employees, for many years and provides work for a further 300 people via its suppliers. After the planned site in western Hungary is opened, the company envisages increasing its number of employees by more than 10%.

The Gebrüder Weiss Company
The Lauterach-based (Austria, Voralberg Province) company Gebrüder Weiss employs approximately 4.500 employees worldwide at 137 sites in 25 countries. In Central and Eastern Europe, GW operates sites in Austria, Switzerland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Italy, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine. The logistics group realised a turnover of 840 million EUR in business year 2009 and the Hungarian subsidiary generated sales revenue of 8.7 billion HUF in 2009.