Warehousing in Europe – Northern actor perspective

Abstract

Importance of warehousing has increased during the recent decade and among cost issues, these outlets have become value adding centers; responding to market changes with maximized corporate profitability. Our research concerns Finnish and Swedish companies, and their warehousing decisions in larger Europe. According to our longitudinal survey results, warehousing location in Finnish companies is more weighted towards East, while Swedish companies focus on West. Warehousing size itself will continue to increase, but smaller units have future too. However, most significant changes appear in the location criteria; most of the new establishments will consider road transportation connection, low distribution costs, infrastructure enabling intermodal transportation and availability of third party solutions. Among these assembly and manufacturing plant location plays important role. Overall from survey results it is seen that emerging economies of Europe are explaining quite many development paths, especially among Finnish respondents.