Recently I got the very exciting privilege of touring DHL Finland division’s Head Office and warehouse in Vantaa organized by our inspiring Trade and Logistics’ teacher Kaija Haapasalo.

The presentation

We started the tour with a presentation by Eija Viikki-Westenius who is the Recruitment & HRD Manager. She talked to us about their mission and goals for the future. DHL is the world’s leading brand in the logistics industry and is part of the Deutsche Post DHL Group, whose turnover in 2017 was over EUR 60 billion. Their global network includes more than 220 countries and territories and about 360,000 employees. Deutsche Post DHL goal is to reduce all logistics-related emission to zero by the year 2050. Their goal is to become the market in green logistics target and hope to achieve their own climate protection targets in order to reduce global warming.  As they said in their presentation, this means they will start using a large number of bikes and electronic cars for their door to door delivery. I very liked this zero-emission plan, because we need to take climate change more seriously and be aware of impacts of global warming.

DHL Finland

In Finland, DHL employs nearly 900 professionals in four business units: DHL Express, DHL Freight, DHL Global Forwarding and DHL Supply Chain. Their Head Office is a 4-floor building; however, they are using only 2 floors since they had laid off a lot of employees. In Finland, DHL is the second biggest, and number one is CHS which is a privately-owned Finnish logistics company and their biggest competitor. From outside, everything seems very small but when you enter the warehouse you can see how huge it is; moreover, you can see thousands of items that has been organized and placed neatly. Since it’s Christmas season, I saw how busy it gets for them in this time of the year, everyone was in a rush and all of those trucks kept coming and going was exciting to see.

Supply Chain and Freight Terminal

They gave us a tour of their Supply Chain warehouse and Freight terminal, but did not let us take pictures. The picture above is taken from public domain to illustrate my blog. Their presentation included displaying a special refrigerated container (Shipping container) and pointed out the importance of not damaging the goods. In addition, I learned about their way of handling the documents in the office and interestingly how DHL’s tracking-numbers works, and how they track all of their shipments. This wraps up my blog post. All in all, I have learned a lot of new information from my visit to DHL Finland and it was a very enjoyable experience for me.

Written by Mike
Editor: Trang Dang