Hidden giant

It is a giant, but one that has tended to keep a low profile up to now. The Belgian logistics firm Katoen Natie, based in Antwerp, operates in the European DIY and garden sector and offers it solutions for pretty much all steps in the supply chain. Major chains and suppliers in the European DIY market number among the company's customers. These include several natio­nal subsidiaries of Leroy Merlin, which belongs to the French Groupe Adeo. Katoen Natie handles all of the group's direct imports from Asia; the containers are unloaded at the port in Antwerp and are transferred to the logistics company's warehouse for interim storage before being shipped to locations across Europe. To keep the effort to a minimum in the individual DIY stores, the goods are packed at Katoen Natie in a mirror image of the shelves in the store. The employees that fill the shelves there can thus simply remove them in sequence. For Leroy Merlin in Belgium and Italy, the Belgian company handles the entire delivery process to the individual stores. A big DIY customer in France is Brico Dépôt, a chain belonging to the UK's Kingfisher Group. Katoen Natie has likewise assumed responsibility for store deliveries here. Customers in Spain include Conforama.

The logistics firm also offers services for online retailers, including the Dutch Intergamma Group since the start of 2014. It has been taking care of the latter's online store, launched on 1 January 2014, for its distribution channels Gamma and Karwei in the Netherlands and also handling its operation in Belgium since March. Around 25 000 products, thus virtually the entire range, is available to the customer online and passes through one of Katoen Natie's halls in Antwerp port. The individual orders are picked and packed here and dispatched to the customer's home. The company's staff already knew how the procedure works, because Intergamma isn't the logistics company's only e-commerce customer. Katoen Natie has been active in this line of business for the Internet buying clubs Vente-Exclusive / Snapstore for some time.

... was originally engaged in trading cotton (Flemish: katoen), hence the name. The company is proud of its flat organisation, and proprietor Fernand Huts is involved himself in the…