(UPDATE) Jan de Rijk Logistics logs moderate gains in 2016

(UPDATED) Netherlands-based Jan de Rijk Logistics posted just shy of 10 percent growth in operating results for 2016. At the same time, last year’s total combined turnover decreased slightly to €208 million, with an operating margin of €18.1 million, a slight increase over 2015’s €16.6 million operating margin.

Jan de Rijk attributed its operating margins to “increased activities in contract logistics and further process improvement initiatives.”

The company blamed the decline in turnover to factors including a lower fuel surcharge income and the reduction of train operations.

In an email  sent after the publication of this article, Sebastiaan Scholte CEO of Jan de Rijk Logistics elaborated on the change in business. “Before we operated two company trains under the Jan de Rijk contract. One train was being filled by a partner company and the other train by us. This gave us more flexibility. However the other partner company decided to operate their own train in 2016 and therefore we only operated one train in 2016. Therefore the revenues went down (since we were contractor of the train), but the external revenues to customers did not go down. In other words for the market we did not reduce capacity.”

The company’s outlook for 2017 is “modestly optimistic.” Jan de Rijk pointed to improvements on a global economic scale and a rise in consumer trust. In terms of potential threats, Jan de Rijk cited rising labor costs, a shortage of capacity in the market and increased legislation as the chief points of concern.