Report from a successful logistic seminar in Helsinki

Establish Finland together with the Logistics Association of Finland arranged, for the 23rd time, the most important logistics’ event this year on the 7th-8th of February in Finlandia Hall, Helsinki. No less than 1,200 participants took part in the seminar, mostly Supply Chain executives. They listened to their colleagues from Finland, Sweden and US who gave their impressions and experiences of different topics such as establishing business in Russia, outsourcing of logistics’ operations, improve sourcing strategy and more.

One of the speakers was Ahti Vilppula, member of the board, from Ruukki Group gave us an insight in their experiences of establishing the business in Russia.

Ahti Vilppula emphasized the need of local partners in Russia and that it is wise to use advisors, not that the bureaucracy was too bad but that legal advise is extremely important. The infrastructure is lacking behind and the Ruukki Group could at some point not transport their goods on trucks but used sea and rail transport instead. The difficulties made Ruukki Group realize that they did not control their Supply Chain at all times, which is a frightening experience.

The speaker from Patria, Jorma Viitakorpi, Managing Director, told us about outsourcing and emphasized the need to define our strategic processes and what can be outsourced. To answer questions like: What do we want to do ourselves? What do we want our partner to do? How can we keep know-how in the company although the process is outsourced? His experience was that you are likely to find resistance because people believe certain areas are the company’s core competence where you need to question yourself if they really are. You have to define what is core competence and be prepared to outsource the rest. Keep it simple was Jorma Viitakorpi’s advice and do not use more than three to five KPIs to define how to measure your partner.

Maersk Logistics’ Morten Bruehl, Vice President, held an interesting seminar of how they see the demand for their services in Eastern Europe is increasing – or more specifically the trade between East and West. The Baltic Sea is an important gateway to Russia from Western Europe and the port of S:t Petersburg is lacking of capacity and the infrastructure outside S:t Petersburg is poor, which creates certain challenges. The Russian containerized market is growing with more than 20% each year and 70%  of the total Russian containerized import enter Russia via the Baltic Sea. This means that Finland too, is an important gateway to support the logistics for companies trading with Russia.

The conference ended on the first day for some, but for those who had decided to go on the Cruiser to Tallin to continue networking and socializing dinner was waiting on the ship. The focus of day two was a visit to the harbour in Tallinn in the morning. And was followed up by the Contact Forum in the afternoon, where participants had the possibility to get into further and more thorough discussions with logistics vendors.

I look forward to meet you there next year!

Lena Ridström
GM United Solutions