Introduction continued - DHL Danzas Air & Ocean and DHL Global Forwarding

Good morning All

This is turning out to be a lengthy introduction but having said that, my career in logistics did begin in 1979, so it's pretty concise I suppose!

Having taken on the role of Head of Trade Lane Development or Global Trade Lane Manager at Danzas AEI, my team of 10 was a combination of former AEI and former Danzas people as we were in the early stages post integration, the cultural differences still hadn't worked themselves through, therefore managing the combined team was challenging but I was really enjoying the role. Quite understandably, the Air Express International staff felt a little unhappy that a smaller (in UK terms) freight forwarder, Danzas, had purchased AEI (the then number 1 freight forwarder in the UK) and the former Danzas management were running the new combined company. Chris Fahy was UK Managing Director of the new organisation and he was focused on merging the Danzas and AEI teams and achieving cost synergies be that increased margins on existing business (as a result of the enhanced buying power of AEI) and the usual things like merging or sharing facilities.

Although I was leading the team, I also took on a former role from Kuehne & Nagel times, that of UK Trade Lane Manager, North East USA and I began to make the bi-annual sales development / trade lane visits to places such as Rochester (ex AEI location), Boston, Hartford, New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Washington and Baltimore). I partnered up with a several US based colleagues between 2000 and 2007 (when I took on the Western USA area for a change). As I recall, I first worked with Siobhan Burns (now Siobhan Ferrick, now head of logistics at Pall Corporation), Joe Verica (who sadly passed away with cancer) and latterly Jennifer D'Amico, who is still at DHL Global Forwarding working as their regional sales manager for Philadelphia. They were all great to work with, totally committed to the role and super responsive. What more could you ask for?

As time went on Deutsche Post were keen to establish their logistics mega player and to this end, bought stakes in DHL, finally taking complete control in 2002. This allowed them to use the highly prestigious DHL name as they saw fit, and in 2003, we were renamed DHL Danzas Air & Ocean. This was a big deal, as DHL was one of the worlds top 100 brands and instant recognition by customers thus helping our marketing and sales efforts both in SME (small-medium) and MNC (multi-national) clients.

I think this was probably the most enjoyable phase, post integration with AEI, as the integration issues were in the past, we had built stable and effective teams and we had the extra cache of the DHL brand name - but critically we retained the Danzas name, which was a big name in freight forwarding with its heritage all the way back to 1815. Best of both worlds I'd say.

We all thought that this was it, DDAO (DHL Danzas Air & Ocean) was a big player, backed by Deutsche Post and we were performing well - until in late 2005, we all had a bit of a shock - Deutsche Post were in talks with Exel Plc, the world's largest contract (3PL & 4PL) logistics provider.

Next time, I will explain how we had to go through yet another merger in 2006.