Following expansion at its HQ and a stellar show in Stuttgart, Torque catches up with Dr Volker Lederer, Director of high quality and stainless steel fastener distributor Lederer…
If you visited Lederer’s stand at Fastener Fair Stuttgart earlier this year you would have received the VIP treatment, with not only a red carpet to tread but also a paparazzi-style photo opportunity available for visitors to the stand. More importantly, you likely will also have noticed that the stand was extremely busy whatever the time of day, despite it being one of the bigger stands at the show. The company told Torque that a competitor called them on the Friday after the exhibition to tell them that “your exhibition stand has become a meeting place for the industry”.
“We were happy that it was so popular,” Lederer Director Dr Volker Lederer tells Torque Magazine. “A lot of customers, suppliers and business friends came to see us and we had the opportunity to present ourselves as a modern, innovative and friendly company.”
Aside from compelling show performances, it has been a strong opening to the year for the distributor perhaps best known for high quality and stainless steel fasteners.
“Business in 2017 started positively,” reveals Dr Lederer. “In Q1 we could increase turnover and volume. Remarkably, we’ve even seen a further increase after the Fastener Fair.
“Retailers, resellers and distributors are especially important to us at this time. We’ve also steadily increased our turnover with industrial customers.”
Four million articles and counting
Lederer is well placed to handle the growing trade. In fact it’s one of the first years in recent times that its Ennepetal headquarters in North Rhine-Westphalia will be relatively construction-free. A programme of expansion has seen it enlarge its warehousing and logistics facilities, completed in 2015, as well as a significant expansion of office space, which was finished in the second half of last year. Both have given Lederer capacity to grow.
Thanks to that expansion, Lederer’s extensive warehouse and logistics centre now covers 145,000m³. That incorporates over 1.5km of automated belts in the warehouse with over 30,000 bins in circulation. Racks take full advantage of warehouse heights that peak around 20 metres (65 feet) and the new storage space is 15,000m², with 23,000 shelving units, 5,500 tiny parts storage units and 156 cantilever shelves. There are approximately 20,000 pallet spaces for 80,000 different articles and 59,000 automated small parts in the future.
By the day, between 40 and 45 tonnes outgoing goods volumes pass from the Lederer warehouse – around four million articles a day. Customers placing orders by 4pm will have their goods on their way by the end of the day, turning ‘your late into an early’ – in the words of Lederer.
“The reaction to our enhanced facilities among customers and suppliers has consistently been very positive,” Dr Lederer tells Torque Magazine. “It proves that Lederer is continuing to develop and grow.”
So, now that work is complete on the enhanced offices and warehouses, what exactly is on the agenda for Lederer in 2017 and beyond? “The next big step is the update of our ERP system within the next 18 months,” concludes Dr Lederer. “Another important issue is the consequent optimisation of all administrative and logistic processes.”
This article originally appeared in the June edition of Torque Magazine. Read the full mag here or subscribe for free here.