Page 26 - Port Of Hamburg Magazine 04.2019

■ INNOVATIVE INDUSTRY
‘Chemical industry logistics waking from a deep sleep’
In cooperation with the trade journal ‘CHEManager’, this year Miebach Consulting conducted a market survey of chemical company logistics. This included a comparison of the latest findings with the preceding 2016 survey, aiming to show what trends have concerned the industry since then.
“For between five and ten years, the chemical in- dustry has been waking from a long sleep in its lo- gistics. Growing competitive pressure, greater sen- sitivity on prices among customers, shifts in acquisition and sales markets, along with bur- geoning safety/security regulations, confront che- mical company logistics with fresh challenges,” says Dr. Klaus-Peter Jung of Miebach Consulting’s Management Board.
IMMENSELY HETEROGENEOUS
Contrary to scientific publications with a different message, no clear trend towards ‘lean’, ‘agile’ or ‘service orientated’ supply chains could be discer- ned among participants in this survey. The trend is not towards ‘one supply chain fits all’, but product- and market-specific driven supply chains and paral- lels between different supply chains.
BEHIND OTHER INDUSTRIES ON OUTSOURCING LOGISTICS
In the chemical industry the degree of logistics out- sourcing is still substantially lower than in other manufacturing sectors. Yet the increasing professio- nalization of logistics providers in recent years has opened up more far-reaching opportunities here for outsourcing processes.
Whereas in the 2016 survey the greatest future growth in relation to the existing degree of out- sourcing was forecast in filling, analysis, and the operation of silo storage, respondents to the 2019 survey primarily anticipate future growth in the areas of tank farm management, in-house transport and loading/labelling.
GOOD LOGISTICS PROMOTES CORPORATE SUCCESS
Of companies with above-average success, over 70 percent (2016: 64 percent) can claim above-average logistics performance, of those below average, ap- prox. 56 percent (2016: 80 percent) below-average logistics. Generating above-average results with poor logistics was achieved by just 13 percent (2016: 23 percent) of those in the 2019 survey.
“Is this an indication that poorer/better logistics performance could entail poorer/better corporate
THE BETTER THE LOGISTICS, THE GREATER THE PROSPECT OF SUCCESS – ONE OF THE FINDINGS OF THE MIEBACH SURVEY OF CHEMICAL LOGISTICS
26 | Port of Hamburg Magazine | December 2019