Half year update Voerman Group

We see that some of the results of our traditional markets are under pressure. This is compensated with steady growth on turnover and margin at our other daughter companies.

The Voerman Group noticed that the market conditions in Western Europe still didn’t improve. We see a flat trend on the relocation- and removal companies and industry in general. Luckily because of an active sales policy we were able to attract a lot of new customers that has a direct positive effect on Eurohome. Export moves from Western Europe show a declining trend where there are more third country coordinated moves. Eastern Europe is still very positive where Central Europe is heading towards the same situation as West Europe. Our offices in Central Europe are growing as a result of more import and consolidation of the volume from our own customers as well as that of our partners. From our office in Prague we will carry out and handle more moves. We are still at a beginning phase but expect a significant growth in the second half of this year.

The Russian market is still on a move. We see stabilization in the topic of import duties & taxes for moving goods into Russia. The amount of moves to Russia is slowly rising in numbers. The presence of Eurohome in Russia for this second half year results has a direct link to the rise of the amount of imports. Also our increased sales staff in Eurohome Russia will result in more business. Russia is an important market for the Voerman Group and especially the Olympic Winter games of 2014 in Sochi and the World Cup in 2018. At the moment there are a lot of requests coming in for big projects that will stimulate growth of our logic company ULSI (United Logistics Services International).

Although the word ‘crisis’ is much used, Voerman Group showed a solid first half year. Important is that in the second half a solid base will be provided for the start of 2014. The commercial department has been through a change with as main goal to find & attract new customers and operates multi-service support for corporate accounts & mobility teams. We also aim at innovation and growth in upcoming markets. We expect significant changes on web support and web services to provide our customers the best service. We will continue aiming on the growth in the African continent and will report more on progress there in coming months.