Employees

At the end of the quarter, the KION Group employed 23,761 full-time equivalents (31 December 2015: 23,506). The increase in the number of employees is largely due to first-time consolidations in the first quarter as well as growth in eastern Europe.

Personnel expenses rose by 10.4 per cent year on year to €362.4 million (Q1 2015: €328.1 million). This increase resulted mainly from the larger headcount and changes to collective bargaining. In addition, the acquisition of Egemin Automation and the opening of the new plant in Stříbro, Czech Republic also added to the increase. > TABLE 16

Employees (full-time equivalents)

16

 

31/03/2016

31/12/2015

Change

Western Europe

16,558

16,515

0.3%

Eastern Europe

2,029

1,921

5.6%

Americas

827

693

19.3%

Asia

3,768

3,812

–1.2%

Rest of world

579

565

2.5%

Total

23,761

23,506

1.1%