L.I.T. Air & Sea GmbH stands out with a strong team spirit and has big plans for 2024.
Five years after its implementation into the corporate group, L.I.T. Air & Sea GmbH was named »Department of the Year 2023« for its outstanding achievements. We spoke with Managing Director Michael Borowski about the division's development and plans. One thing is clear: its success is primarily based on a strong team spirit.
The business of L.I.T. Air & Sea is booming. Year after year, the order volume grows since the division was integrated into the L.I.T. Group in 2018. Now, the team around Michael Borowski is purposefully continuing its expansion course. The success is attributable both to the increasing demand for air and sea freight transports and to the dedicated teamwork. »In the past five years, we have more than quintupled our revenue. We are all the prouder that our extra work, which we consistently performed as a team during that time, has now been rewarded with the ›Department of the Year‹ award. This is the well-deserved recognition for our jointly achieved performance and motivates us to make our work even better,« Borowski says with pleasure.
What Air & Sea achieves
The extensive service portfolio includes standard air freight shipments, ad-hoc charter flights, on-board courier services, and dangerous goods deliveries. Further additional services include goods consolidation, transport insurance, and customs clearance. With two Locations directly in Hamburg, the portfolio also includes rail transports on the Iron Silk Road to and from China as an alternative to sea freight. Furthermore, the team from the Hanseatic logistics metropolis also covers Renewable Energies as its newest segment: This includes, for example, transports of solar panels or dangerous goods such as lithium-ion batteries domestically and internationally. »Looking to the future, we want to continuously develop our repertoire of services. We clearly see a pillar for this at our Hamburg office in sustainable energies, which are more in demand on the market than ever before,« says Borowski.
Order processing in an optimal location
Currently, Air & Sea is operating at five Locations to handle its extensive range of services – in Barcelona, Bremen, Herford, and, since last year, twice in Hamburg. Thanks to this strategic distribution of branches with optimal connections to northern ports such as Antwerp, Rotterdam, Wilhelmshaven, Bremerhaven, and Hamburg, the division can centrally manage orders from Germany to neighboring countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Belgium. In Barcelona, Spain's second-largest container port, a dedicated team has been in place since 2020 to process orders directly from the Iberian Peninsula.
Diverse team spirit pays off
While initially only eight employees worked for the division, today the team comprises 35 bright minds across Europe who manage the sea and air freight business. The colleagues enrich the team with diverse backgrounds. »Our high language proficiency, such as Polish, Spanish, and even Mandarin, is a decisive advantage in communication with international partners and customers,« says Borowski. Furthermore, the door is open for additional language skills within the team if a potential new market emerges in a country. »I am proud to be part of such a dedicated team that sticks together and is passionate about
working at Air & Sea. Moreover, employees benefit from a special work culture and freedoms.
They can develop individually with us,« says Borowski.
Any growth requires adapting existing business processes and implementing new ones. Therefore, in the future, each Location of the division is to have its own branch manager to further optimize on-site processes. This has already been the case for the Hamburg Locations since last year, with Thomas Behneke, Head of Sea Freight, and Philipp Penkwitt, Head of Air Freight. Since July 2023, Marcel Stubbe has been responsible for this position at the Bremen Location.
Aiming high and far
Currently, the sea freight segment is clearly leading compared to air freight – in a proportional ratio of approximately 80 to 20. »Nevertheless, we see many opportunities to position our air freight even more strongly in the future, which we can achieve, among other things, through synergy effects from the L.I.T. Group,« says Borowski. With this special Europe-wide infrastructure, the division has a competitive advantage in the market and can thus position itself even against top players without having to rely on third parties or external partners. »We can fundamentally cover everything within our corporate group,« adds Borowski.
Accordingly, Air & Sea plans in the long term to position itself even better internationally and to gain entirely new markets – both through organic growth and through acquisitions. »Next on our agenda are India and China. We can well imagine opening up further markets in Southeast Asia such as Indonesia or Bangladesh, in addition to those in European countries and the USA. A lot will be happening with us in the near future,« reveals the Managing Director.