Dubai : The UAE will replace Turkey by next year as the region's largest market for Kuehne and Nagel, a global logistics company.

"Dubai as a global city and international business hub offers favourable conditions for further expansion of our transport and logistics network as well as further investments in our contract logistics business. It is our objective to become one of the region's leading logistics providers," said Reinhard Lange, CEO of Kuehne and Nagel International at a conference yesterday.

In order to facilitate the company's growth target for the UAE, Kuehne and Nagel have relocated its Middle East regional headquarters from Istanbul to Dubai.

"We go where there is the most business. When we started in the region it was Turkey but now we're seeing that the biggest business of the region is going to come from the UAE," Lange told Gulf News.

A major part of the growth plan in the country is the expansion of Kuehne and Nagel's logistics centre at Dubai Logistics City.

Due to demand they're looking to increase their services to a total of 32,000 square metres warehouse space with an investment of $35 million (Dh128.5 million). The new centre will be operational by early 2012.

The company has also just modernised 16,000 square metres of its logistics terminal in the Jebel Ali Free Zone.

Strategic importance

"Dubai has always been of strategic importance to Kuehne and Nagel for bundling the flow of goods of our global and local customers and distributing their products across the entire Middle Eastern region as well as to Asia and Africa," said Werner Kleymann, regional manager for Middle East, Central Asia and Turkey.

The Middle Eastern region currently makes up five to ten per cent of the company's total revenue with $50 to 60 million investment amount in the region

"We're looking at increasing our revenues by 50 per cent in the next year for the whole region," said Lange.

Globally, Kuehne and Nagel are looking to increase their revenue from $17 billion in 2009 to $30 to 40 billion in 2014.

Kuehne and Nagel has been operating in the UAE since 1978. Their growth plans include focusing on growth in the Middle East, Asia and South America. The company is looking at providing domestic services in China, India and Brazil.

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