Bridgestone and Fiege Open Czech Republic Logistics Centre

On May 16th 2008 Bridgestone Europe and its logistics partner Fiege officially opened the new Bridgestone “European Logistics Center ” (ELC) East in the Czech Republic town of Bor. Around 100 guests attended the opening ceremony including representatives from 15 local, regional and national media, neighbouring companies, several customers and suppliers, and various members of Bridgestone Europe and Fiege Group companies.

Both VIP speakers, Fiege CEO Mr. Jens Fiege and Yves Kerstens, VP Supply Chain, Bridgestone Europe, expressed their satisfaction with the relationship between the two long-term partners and the results achieved, specifically in the case of the Bor tyre warehouse. Mr. Kerstens stated in his speech: “Personally I am very pleased to see the results that have been achieved in this context with the Fiege Group. In 1978 Bridgestone was Fiege’s first “contract logistics” customer in Germany and today Fiege is our main service provider in Central and East Europe, operating warehouses in Germany, Hungary, Czech Republic and also the first partner to perform cross border deliveries.”

Over the last three years the Bridgestone group has made several investments in Europe’s supply chain structure, transforming a country-based structure into a European supply chain structure. The initiative, launched in 2005, is based on the creation of three European Logistics Centres: one in Belgium (Zeebrugge), one in Spain (Madrid) and the Bor facility. These three ELC’s store the full Bridgestone product line-up and have four main logistics functions :

1. Import centre for tyres coming from overseas.
2. Weekly Replenishment of the distribution centres in the region.
3. Deliveries to end customers across country borders
4. To act as storage buffers between market demand and production supply.

Phase one of the ELC-East in Bor – some 20 km from the German-Czech Republic border – started operating in September 2006, after the rapid construction of a 54,000 square metre facility over a period of seven months. The location at Bor was selected for its strategic location to serve existing West European markets as well as fast growing markets in East & Central Europe. In May 2007 the company decided to extend the operation by another 16,000 square metres to cope with growing winter tyre market demand.

The capacity of the warehouse totals up to 1.1 million tyres and around 100 employees are responsible for handling over 2,000 different articles, including tyres for passenger cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles, tractors and other agricultural machinery.