The 23rd German Logistics Congress confirmed its position as the leader in the logistics conference market in Europe. From October 18th to 20th, as many as 3,000 guests from 43 countries arrived in Berlin. The scale of the conference, the interesting topics of the lectures, the presentation of best practices, trends, and development prospects for logistics, as well as the opportunity to meet with logistics managers representing global corporations, make this event, which has been held for 23 years, increasingly popular not only in Europe.
Prof. Peer Witten, Chairman of the German Logistics Association (BVL), opening the congress proceedings, emphasized, among other things, that “Logistics creates the conditions for a smoothly functioning global economy, while globalization is the driving force for the development of logistics on an international scale.” The importance of logistics for the economy was highlighted by many of the 130 speakers appearing in Berlin. This topic dominated the press conference organized on the first day of the congress, attended by about 100 journalists. The Vice-Chairman of the BVL, Prof. Frank Straube, presented the results of two reports – “International Sourcing Markets” and “Internationalization of Logistics Systems” – developed by the BVL, the Kühne Foundation, and international partners. They show that as many as 63% of the surveyed companies intend to increase sales in markets such as India, China, or Russia. It is surprising that as many as 72% of companies already experienced in international trade admitted that their previous market development forecasts did not prove accurate. In turn, 25% of respondents indicated cultural barriers (customer mentality, language) as one of the biggest problems in conducting business on an international scale.
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” 6/2006.