Leading position in Europe maintained

In Europe, we have maintained our leading position with a market share of nearly 24%, even though the international express market in Europe suffered greatly from the recession. We have provided our customers with first-class service at competitive prices on all trade lanes, particularly to and from Asia and Eastern Europe.

Although we saw volumes decline in our Time Definite International (TDI) product during the reporting year, the trend away from air express shipments and towards more economical ground transport has become more pronounced. We were therefore able to expand our market position in our Day Definite International (DDI) product and slightly increase our market share.

We have reviewed our Day Definite Domestic (DDD) business for profitability and productivity and decided to implement measures for streamlining our portfolio in the UK and France.

We now deliver more than 94% of all our pre-12.00 noon shipments on time (previous year: 92.2%). Our intercontinental hub at Leipzig/Halle Airport plays a major role in making this possible. Each working day some 60 aircraft take off and land there and around 1,500 tonnes of freight are handled. We maintain connections to 46 countries on three continents with more than 27,000 city pairs between Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

At the end of 2009, we announced our intention to relocate the central functions from our head offices in Brussels to offices in Bonn, Leipzig and Prague in order to leverage synergies.