The World meets V-LINE
Sehnde, Germany, 09/01/2006
A single screw made out of high grade steel or a complete compressor station for a desalination plant: V-LINE supplies it promptly and guarantees a fixed price all around the world. Since its founding in 1979, the V-LINE Group with headquarters in Sehnde near Hanover, Germany has become the most successful supplier worldwide for genuine spare parts directly from the original manufacturers to industrial plants on four continents.
In comparison to a year ago, the company increased its turnover by 40 % to 56 Million Euro. 85 V-LINE employees have been working on this success: 58 at the headquarters in Sehnde, Germany, the remaining at all other locations, in New Jersey (USA), Sao Paulo (Brazil), Puebla (Mexico) and Beijing (China). In total V-LINE has approximately 100 customers from at least 20 different industries. They are operating desalination or petrochemical plants in the Arabian world, steel mills in China and car factories in Thailand, Brazil or Mexico.
Annual Summit with prominent guests
For the past several days all foreign sales representatives and all COO’s from the V-LINE affiliates in the USA, Japan, China, Brazil and Mexico have gathered in Germany for the traditional annual Sales Force Summit. The gathering took place at the newly renovated company headquarters and at Parkhotel Bilm. Guest attendees included important customers from Saudi Arabia, China and Brazil. Roundtable discussion topics at the event were V-LINE global business key success factors and promising, innovative new business models. Of special interest was the discussion about extension of company operations in Brazil to add import performance and local value added services for a full-service offering for the complete supply chain from the parts manufacturer of Europe to Brazilian plants using European machinery and equipment. To implement this extension, a partnership with a substantial Brazilian company from the pharmaceutical and medical industry has been launched. It will be ratified at the end of September in Sao Paulo during a Brazil Trade Mission to be led by Lower Saxony Minister Economics, Labour and Transport, Mr. Walter Hirche.
A highlight of the event was two lectures by prominent global academic business specialists, Prof. Dr. Klaus-Peter Wiedmann, Principal of the Institute for Marketing and Management of Leibniz University Hanover and Prof. Dr. Lindu Zaho from South East University, Nanjing.
International exchange of students for optimal training
By the way: in 2005, six of the Chinese Scientist’s students successfully completed V-LINE internships in Sehnde. This followed several years of V-LINE’s facilitating German business administration/economics students to graduate 12 and 18 months internships at its US affiliate VARIOLINE. Usually these young people will become V-LINE employees upon their return to Germany. Soon these internships will start vice versa. A young American citizen started on July 1st in the USA and will come to Sehnde beginning of 2007.
Within the next weeks two young Germans will start their training at the Sehnde headquarters to become management assistants in wholesale and foreign trade. A former trainee has been employed after having successfully passed the examinations in June 2006.
