Multinational Logistics Group to Set Up an IT Centre in Estonia

An international logistics giant Kühne+Nagel has selected Estonia as its location for the group IT centre and plans to open it in the autumn.

"I am more than convinced that it is the right decision," said the group's IT manager Martin Kolbe to Äripäev, addng that it was availability of suitable workforce that attracted the company into Estonia.

Kolbe said that it was last year that the group started to look for possibilities to expand its IT centre. The current centre had been located in the group's head office and needed expansion for developing new systems and capacity.

The company made a comprehensive analysis of potential locations and zoomed in on the Baltic countries. Once the company's executives visited the possibilities on site, and also discussed the plans with local chambers of commerce, they determined that the centre will be located in Estonia.

Kolbe who last week visited Estonia with the German President said that key aspects for the decision were business culture and capacity of local people.

"Creativity is important because we will be giving our employees major tasks," said Kolbe.

He added that one reason why Kühne + Nagel decided for Estonia was the rapid development of the country's IT sector. The company was particularly impressed with the likes of Skype and the banking systems and found that Estonia was the best place to be.

I travel also in other Baltic countries, but I must say that it has been the right decision," said Kolbe, adding that in his opinon IT people in similar centres in other countries are mostly involved in support functions and working with specific systems instead of creating something themselves.

Kolbe says that he has seen how Estonians take up the idea, analyse it and offer practical solutions for optimisation of operations. "We don't need assistants, we need creative peopel who can come up with their ideas and proposals and to take a pragmatic approach to IT," he added.

According to Kolbe, the company's IT centre will be located in Ülemiste City which wants to become an incubation centre for Europe's IT centres.

Hired 100 people in a year In the last year alone, the Estonian arm of Kühne+Nagel AS has hired about ten people, totalling more than 100 people by now.

Mat Ambur, head of the company's IT centre in Tallinn, says that the work that the company can offer its IT people is very interesting and wide-ranging.

"We are very satisfied because we can offer interesting jobs for local people. We have also hired peopel who have been working abroad and now returned to Estonia. They think that it is very challenging for them since we enable them to work with large systems, large databases and complex data," said Ambur.

Ambur disagrees with claims that the Estonian labour market is small and says that the company has had a job inteview almost every day for the last year.

"Considering that we have hired about 100 peopel in the last year, I think that claims that there is a shortage of employees is totally wrong. We are happy with what the labour market is offering us," said Ambur.

Kolbe added that since Kühne+Nagel operates in more than 100 countries, the company's employees often travel and visit other offices in different countries. The group has smaller local IT centres also in US, Hongkong and Buenos Aires.

Kühne+Nagel International AG is a logistics company that has operations in more than 100 countries and employs 63,000 people. It has been operating in Estonia since 2006.

Äripäev