Maintaining growth in a challenging market place

Published on 4 December 2012

It has been an interesting year – to say the least. Market circumstances have been difficult in Western Europe and the traditional business has decreased overall in all markets.

In Eastern Europe we have seen a slightly positive market place and especially in Russia we have been able to make the next steps in growing the company. Voerman Russia has been able to maintain its leading position in the Russian market and secured the largest contracts available in its market. The Russian client base is growing rapidly and is a key focus point.

Although the word “crisis” has been the name of the game, the Voerman Group has seen a good 2012 in total. We have serviced more relocations as ever before, developed new markets, new services & maintained our market positions. All our companies have shown an increase in turn-over, but gross margin has been under pressure throughout. Most impressive was the steep growth at Eurohome Relocation Services and our Russian companies. Eurohome has developed to be one of the market leading relocation companies in Western Europe. It has been able to sign multiple big relocation contracts and serves more & more Fortune 500 companies. Key is growth has been developing of the personal service with the best IT support possible. Eurohome really manages to make a difference and has great portfolio to maintain growth in 2013.

On the corporate move management Voerman group has been able to secure the largest contract in the Dutch market place. We also re-signed all expiring contracts, which is a great achievement. Although this good news it has been difficult to operate as most accounts shipped less volume of moves as year before. Due to a plumbed domestic market and pressure on international volume there has been a lot of margin deflation. We have been able to restructure our operational procedures with our IT platform RedSky. This really makes the difference and will be the key driver of both growth of results as efficiency in the next years. Our future will be our people combined with the best IT platform in the mobility industry.