Warehousing space is due to be expanded this year in order to prevent any capacity bottlenecks and cope with the increase in customer enquiries at the Rhenus Warehousing Solutions sites in Eisenach, Hamburg-Harburg and Dortmund. As online and mail order retailing now accounts for almost 13 percent of all volumes in the retail trade and more and more people in Germany and beyond are ordering their goods online, the need for warehouse space and logistics solutions is increasing all the time. Gross turnover in the e-commerce sector overall grew by 12.5 percent in Germany to reach a figure of EUR 53 billion last year.

“We’ll be able to cope with these developments by expanding our business sites in 2017. Compared to the store-based retail business, picking for the distinct orders placed by online shoppers is much more individual and is far harder to plan. As a result, we not only make available intelligent warehouse solutions for our customers, but also expertise in IT and our own warehouse management system,” says Christian Mahler, a member of the Rhenus Warehousing Solutions Deutschland management team.

The overall area at the Eisenach site will be extended by 20,000 square metres to a total figure of 60,000 square metres by the end of November 2017. The warehouse, which was opened in 2012, is suitable for products up to water hazard class 3. The storage space at the Dortmund site will be expanded by almost 34,000 square metres, enabling the total area to increase to about 84,000 square metres. The building work there started in February and is due to have been completed by the end of the year. The total warehouse space at the multi-user distribution centre at Hamburg-Harburg will be enlarged by 21,000 square metres to provide 52,500 square metres of space. This expansion work has already
started too and should be finished by the summer of this year. The facility is also suitable for water hazard class 3 and a broad range of hazardous materials, including flammable liquids. The site has been equipped with the latest fire-extinguishing technology to cope with this.

About Rhenus
The Rhenus Group is a logistics services provider with global business operations and annual turnover of EUR 4.6 billion. Rhenus has business sites at over 500 locations worldwide and employs more than 26,000 people. The Rhenus business areas – Contract Logistics, Freight Logistics, Port Logistics and Public Transport – manage complex supply chains and provide a wealth of innovative value-added services.