Logistics Management 21

Economic interbellum 2011 was a pretty good year for LOGISTICS Management all round, both editorially and commercially. A good listener can deduce from this that a) there was a lot of news to be had in the logistics sector and b) advertisers had sufficient advertising budgets to make their innovations known to the world via the trade press. According to an unwritten law in the media, this also means that our readers did relatively well in 2011, thanks to the – albeit drastic – savings measures that you have taken in recent years. Despite all optimism, 1 in 84 companies went bankrupt last year, an extremely alarming figure. Things were particularly hard in the catering industry, but the transport sector has also been in the corner for a while now. Logistics service providers generally remained unscathed, as the volumes of goods were hardly inferior to those of the record year 2008. Thanks to an excellent first semester, because in the autumn the fat had already been off the soup. A definitive ceasefire does not seem to be on the cards for a long time, given the sky-high – only one word applies here – tax burden that the business community will have to bear in the coming years. Transporters are preparing for a new turbulent period, while for some the water has been up to their lips for some time. Falling volumes of goods and shrinking consumer confidence are also causing logistics service providers to hesitate, which is why the word 'investment' is also shifting into the background for most of them. So we cannot talk about a favourable star this year, but as a trade journal we would still like to take to the barricades for a positive mentality. Or to put it with an appropriate saying: the pessimist sits back and does nothing, the optimist has already delivered them…