Industry Logistics Number of employees 2,585 | Revenue 547 Mio. € (2013) Founded 1 May 1852 | |
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Key people Philip W. Herwig
Hans-Ludger Körner
Ulrike Baum
Jan Skovgaard
Thomas Hansen
Hylton Gray Type of business Limited Partnership (GmbH & Co. KG) Subsidiaries Weiss-Rohlig Japan Co., Ltd. Profiles | ||
Röhlig is a global logistics provider with a network of more than 2,000 people in over 30 countries. Established in 1852 and based in Bremen, the company’s core business is sea freight, air freight, project logistics and supply chain management.
Contents
1852 to 1890
Röhlig was initially set up by businessman Carl Röhlig on 1 May 1852 in Bremen as a tobacco and insurance company. Shipping and freight operations commenced in 1859. As industrialisation, free trade and steam ships took hold, the company grew. When Carl Röhlig died in 1886, his sons Oskar and Eduard took over, continuing to expand business operations in North America throughout the 1880s. Branch offices soon opened in Hamburg, Bremerhaven and overseas.
1890 to 1960
Karl Herwig, Oskar Röhlig’s son-in-law and great uncle of the current owner, took over the company in 1913. The shipping industry changed rapidly with the transportation of bulk goods. Oskar and Eduard Röhlig died in 1929 and 1930 respectively. The company was destroyed in World War II.
In the 1950s and 60s, Karl Herwig and his partner Adolf Backhus rebuilt the international sea freight forwarding business. In 1956, the sons Oscar Herwig and Walther Backhus took over the management of the company together with Hans H. Schackow.
Since 1960
The company branched out into a second line of business with intercontinental air freight. Representative offices were opened in 1963 in Johannesburg and in 1973 in Sydney.
Karl Herwig died in 1964. His son Oscar managed the business from Hamburg together with his partner Hans H. Schackow in Bremen until the 1980s. Hans H. Schackow died in 1985, followed by consul Oscar Herwig in 1997.
Thomas W. Herwig became the fifth generation to take over the business in 1985, setting up branch offices in places such as Poland, Hong Kong, Singapore, France, Italy and Spain. New locations in India, North and South America as well as Asia were subsequently added to the network. In 2011, the firm increased its presence in Latin America by taking over its long-term partner Procargo.
Nowadays, Röhlig’s network covers more than 2,000 people in over 30 countries. In January 2015, Thomas W. Herwig handed over the management to his son Philip W. Herwig. He heads the Global Executive Board that manages the company from their sites in Bremen, Miami, Hong Kong as well as Johannesburg. The company has been headquartered in the Haus am Fluss in Bremen since 2009.
Strategy
Röhlig operates with three-year-strategies. Previous strategies were the intensification of its core competencies, namely sea and air freight, the establishment of project's logistics as new concentration, the expansion and implementation of modern IT tools and the increased significance of Customer Relationship Management.
The current strategy, titled Directions 2018, focuses on the development of next generation businesses to further support the different methods used by its partners in order for the partner to become market leader.