The services of the logistics operators will diversify quite a lot on the local market soon, and most of them are preparing investments in new warehouses taking up to 80,000 square meters, said the representatives of the transport and logistics companies at the ZF Transport & Logistics Summit 2015 on Tuesday. The event is now at its second edition and was organized in partnership with Palle-EX Romania and Wim Bosman Romania. The transports and logistics is a EUR3.5 billion market in Romania.
“The development of the online segment changed the structure of the logistics operations. (…) it starts being served as the several major players on the market dictated,” said Adriana Palasan, Managing Partner, Supply Chain Management Center and founding member of logistics association ARILOG.
“For instance, a ‘fitting room’ service will be implemented, where several products in different sizes are delivered and the customer buys the right one. Such services are already available on the market. I don’t know if the market needs it but it is an innovation and we will probably require everyone to offer it. We even have drones in Romania and, like in the US where they are testing drone-operated delivery, we, too, will see such trendsetters in Romania.”
On the one hand, operations conducted in warehouses have changed, she says, and on the other, parcel delivery companies are gaining ground because they have changed their business model bringing it closer to the logistics operators’ model as almost every parcel delivery company has its own storage space.
The new services implemented, however, can also hurt the bottom line of the logistics companies, as processes entailed in providing them become more complex, Adriana Palasan added.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)