Customers
The KION Group’s industrial trucks and supply chain solutions are deployed in all kinds of industries.
The Industrial Trucks & Services segment has a very broadly diversified customer base, ranging from large key accounts with global operations to small and medium-sized enterprises that typically order just a few trucks each year.
The Supply Chain Solutions segment benefits from long-standing customer relationships with major players in the e-commerce and logistics sectors. They influence the success of the segment’s new business and service business. Specific solutions, such as micro-fulfilment, help Dematic to further consolidate its position in major customer sectors, including general merchandise, grocery wholesale and retail, fashion, food and beverage manufacturing, and parcel and courier services. The KION Group is already a global player in most of these sectors and enjoys established relationships with its customers. It has been able to extend these relationships through joint development projects and other initiatives. These efforts are supported by targeted customer retention formats, such as the Dematic customer day that was launched in 2019 for small and medium-sized enterprises and focuses mainly on compact and versatile automation solutions as well as aftersales services.
The KION brand companies again exhibited at the sector’s leading trade fairs in various regions in 2019 in order to consolidate their standing among customers and partners.
In the EMEA region, the Linde, STILL and Baoli brand companies, as well as Dematic, presented their most important innovations in the fields of automation, energy and safety at the 2019 LogiMAT trade fair in Stuttgart. Dematic also exhibited its comprehensive range of solutions for the optimisation of supply chains at the Warehouse Tech Middle East 2019 in Dubai.
The presence of the two operating segments in Asia and North America was significantly expanded. At CeMAT ASIA, the flagship intralogistics trade fair for Asia, Linde, Baoli and Dematic teamed up to exhibit their products and technologies for automation, digitalisation and alternative drive systems. The three brand companies also intend to work closely together to make Industry 4.0 a reality in China. At ProMat 2019 in Chicago, the KION Group was represented alongside Dematic and KION North America and exhibited numerous new process solutions and technologies. The market launch of Linde’s product line for warehouse automation marked a significant milestone for KION North America in its efforts to expand its North America business. Dematic, meanwhile, sponsored the Material Handling & Logistics Conference in Utah, where customers and industry experts engaged in dialogue in a wide range of workshops and lectures on new trends and applications.
In 2019, the level of appreciation from customers and the strength in innovation demonstrated by the KION Group’s brand companies were again recognised in the form of major awards. STILL collected yet another IFOY Award, this time for the automated LiftRunner with LTX 50 in the AGV & Intralogistics Robot category and for its online portal for intelligent fleet management, STILL neXXt fleet. At inter airport Europe 2019, Linde picked up the event’s Excellence Award in the interRAMP category for its innovative assistance system Linde Safety Guard. Dematic received the 2019 German Brand Award in the year that it celebrates its 200th anniversary, and its Imagination Center at the Heusenstamm site won the coveted Red Dot design award.