Insight

Working together with both suppliers and customers, Achilles Seibert GmbH has completed a heavy period of investment to ensure a consistent and steady flow of goods, with the opening of two new warehouses in Vietnam and India, as well as the increase of capacity at its German warehouse by 50%.

Timo Scholle, managing director at Achilles Seibert, explains: “The business in the last two years has been a bit of a rollercoaster, but in general it’s more stable now. With numerous external challenges – such as the energy and Suez crises, the ongoing war in Ukraine, as well as the political ambition in the EU to regulate businesses further – we needed to focus on investments to open up new markets for us, especially overseas.”

Achilles Seibert, known as Achill, therefore set-up a new warehouse in Vietnam and India to add further capacity, but predominately to serve customers outside the EU. Although the new warehouses do have their benefits for EU customers as they help to close the delivery gap between traditional EU distributors, who deliver within days from stock, and producers who need up to six months to deliver items. Achill is able to provide an additional service to customers who want to avoid the risk of a defect delivery, or for those who need to source from new purchase markets but have a lack of experience or staff. Achill is able to ship inspected items from these warehouses within a week, so under normal transport situations, the customer is able to receive goods in around six weeks. 

“Our goal is to enable smaller companies to import alongside us. That way we can support them with our experience and know-how and even take care of their CBAM reporting – something that is obviously a big challenge for distributors at the moment,” comments Timo.

He continues: “The import of goods will continue to get more expensive and it will take a lot of time to meet all the requirements. The beginning of the CBAM quarterly reports in January this year was very hard, but until July we can use standard values published from the EU, which makes it a bit easier. After this date we need the correct values from all our suppliers so we are in constant contact with suppliers to support them and ensure we receive the correct data, promptly. Because of the CBAM situation, it makes sense for us to increase our stock level, which is why we are lucky to have additional warehouse space in Vietnam and India, as well as our German extension – which became fully operational in December 2023.”

The new international warehouses also enable additional added services with staff in both Vietnam and India now serving as sourcing and quality control consultants to customers, underlining Achill’s ongoing commitment to quality. “Quality is paramount to our products –
Achill is known for being a reliable partner to the fastener industry for over 65 years. It’s also important for us to only receive the goods we need in Germany. With the complicated challenges we face on a day-to-day basis, such as lack of containers and longer shipping times, it has never been more important to get the right items, at the right time,” highlights Timo.

Achill strives to serve its customers 24/7, which is why it has also invested in its IT systems and webshop to ensure there is always somebody available, making it easy for customers and suppliers to do business with Achill no matter the time, or wherever in the world they are located. This investment has also enabled Achill to work in a 95% paperless environment, helping to further its commitment to being more environmentally friendly. 

With environmental factors becoming a daily challenge, in 2022 Achill also installed a solar panel park on the roof of its German headquarters. Timo explains: “Every day we try to reach more sustainability goals. With constant new government regulations or customer demands, sustainability is something that we must focus a lot of effort on to introduce new measures into the business.” 

As well as the roof solar park, these new measures include recycling its packing material to use again for deliveries, as well as combining shipments to customers where possible, to try and reduce the CO₂ footprint in transportation. Achill is also in cooperation with local farmers for its wood waste, which can be used to heat animal stables in the winter with a pellet heating system.

Timo concludes: “After two years of big investments and changes, we are happy that we are now in a comfortable situation to work on a steady level and develop new projects. The uncertain outlook for the economy, the political situation, and the worldwide crises and wars, make it more difficult, however our plan is to look to the future and continue to find additional ways to add more value to our customers. Service and time saving business processes are now more important to our customers than ever and at Achill we are committed to a professional, efficient service with the personal touch.”