Container sell-off was a must, says DHL Freight boss

DHL has admitted that its container haulage business, sold to Maritime Transport just before Christmas, would have been likely to remain in the red if it had stayed with DHL.

However, Jeroen Eijsink, MD of DHL Freight UK & Ireland, says that DHL had been close to turning around the business in late 2008 before the market collapsed, effectively sealing its fate.

He says: "The container business was always a local UK speciality, not a core business from a European perspective, therefore it needed to stand on its own two feet.

"The management there did quite a good job of trying to turn it around and had a number of successful months at the back end of 2008.

"However, after that there was a massive downturn in volumes and we expected that it would underperform for the forseeable future."

As the business did not fit in with DHL's new strategic direction, it decided to divest it, he explains.

"I think if the business had continued to enjoy the volumes seen at the peak of 2008, then it would have been strong enough to stand on its own two feet," adds Eijsink.

The container transport operation was acquired when DHL bought Securicor Omega in 2005 and it also disposed of the former Securicor domestic parcel operation last week. However, Eisjink would not be drawn on the question of whether that acquisition had been a poor decision.

Nonetheless, he insists that the divestment leaves DHL Freight to concentrate on growing its core businesses of UK and international full and groupage loads and its domestic UK pallet operation.

Eijsink believes that its pallet network would be in the top five networks in the UK in volume terms and he is keen to expand it.

He adds: "It's a business that we want to move forward, first of all because a domestic pallet network gives us a good delivery platform for international business. We feel confident we can develop and grow it; we did it last year - it was quite good in terms of new business."