With its newest cross dock warehouse now fully operational, Kuehne+Nagel opened its doors for a look inside. The company moved into ARETE Park Zdice in late spring, having embarked on its search for new space back in 2017. For some time, the idea was to open a new facility in the town of Pavlov, but that plan didn’t work out in the end. Then Covid hit, throwing plans into greater disarray.
Eventually, the 3PL giant found a space at Arete Park Zdice, but it wasn’t possible to move until this year. “Until now, we’d been working in a classic contract logistics hall that only had gates on one side, not on both sides,” says director Miroslav Pudil, who’s worked at the company since he was a teenager. “It wasn’t possible to carry out operations as effectively as we can in this type of cross-dock building.”
“Rental prices went up incredibly during Covid, though from what we can tell, they’ve gone down just a little recently. We’ll see how it turns out.” Asked if the company might consider building its own facility next time, Pudil said definitely not. “That’s not our strategy at all, as a company. Kuehne+Nagel’s strategy is to primarily lease space of this type.“
Pudil is less pessimistic than many logistics providers about the prospects for the Czech economy. “We’re expecting that there are some chances for growth both at home and abroad, though a lot depends on Germany. It’s not great there, but we’re not dependent only on the automobile sector – we’re active across many industries.” The company employs a team of 17 warehouse staff (plus an administrative team) to run the new warehouse.
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