Moving Europe

FORUM: DACHSER FACE-TO-FACE
Bernhard Simon meets ...
Hannes Feneberg
Success starts at home. Hannes Feneberg, CEO
of Feneberg Lebensmittel GmbH, spoke to the head
of Dachser’s management board, Bernhard Simon.
hh Mr Feneberg, what do origins and regional
identity mean to you and your grocery
company?
Hannes Feneberg: Origins and regional
identity fundamentally characterize the identity
of our family-run business. Our family
roots go back a long way. Right back to the
12th century. Consequently, we have close
emotional ties with our home region in the
Allgäu.
hh Mr Simon, when people nowadays
refer to Dachser as the Kempton-based
logistics provider, is that too local a designation
for an internationally operating
logistics company?
Bernhard Simon: We no longer refer to
ourselves as a Kempten-based company, but
rather as a global logistics provider that has
its origins and strong local ties in the Allgäu
region. When people in Asia and America
ask where our company roots lie, it’s interesting
to relate our company history, which can
be traced back to Kempten. “Made in Germany”
is associated with engineering skill,
expertise and quality. Both are the result of
many years of experience and a sense of identity
with the origins of our company, which
lie in the Allgäu region. This strengthens our
ties with our home roots.
hh Mr Feneberg, in the food industry
you are bravely swimming against the
tide: you don’t subscribe to the discount
principle, you offer top-quality produce,
where possible sourced locally. How do
you see your role competing against
large-scale, in some cases multinational,
providers?
08 DACHSER magazine
A strong sense of
identity with regional roots
appeals to the taste of
the markets
H. Feneberg: Ten years ago you would often
hear that companies of our size didn’t
stand a chance against the major international
groups. Actually the opposite is true.
Medium-sized companies like ours can in
fact provide services that the industry giants
can’t. In the Allgäu we have a saying that
goes: the bigger the elephants grow, the easier
it is to run between their feet.
Where people
hh identify with
the region, they also develop
awareness for the regional
market Hannes Feneberg
hh Is Dachser such an “elephant”?
B. Simon: Obviously Dachser is a big company.
And there’s nothing wrong with that,
because logistics networks need to be a certain
size to function efficiently. Incidentally,
personally I’m rather fond of elephants. They
are also associated with highly developed social
competence, which is indispensable for
organizing networks, a high degree of mobility
for covering large distances, as well as sensitivity
and creativity, giving them the ability
to understand changing and difficult conditions
and turn them into opportunities. The
thing large-scale companies have to be careful
to avoid is becoming as ungainly as a dinosaur.
We don’t believe in building up
anonymous global corporate structures. The
Dachser approach is that of a flexible associated
group of branch offices, country and
partner organizations that are managed as
autonomous entities on the basis of a common
set of guidelines. The resulting agility
and direct proximity to its customers in the
regions are what set Dachser apart from its
competitors.
hh Do companies have a special responsibility
towards regional economic
structures as a result of this approach?
H. Feneberg: The way I see it is this: our
customers place high expectations on the