Industry News

Driven by the strong mobility sector, and strong double digit growth in eCommerce, BERNER Group has made a successful start to its current financial year, with the family run business realising sales of €581 million – a new sales record. 

In the core business Omnichannel Trading, the Group increased sales by around 5% to over €548 million with the brands BERNER and BTI by BERNER. The Mobility segment made a significant contribution to this, with the B2B specialist recording turnover growth of 8% in the first six months of the current financial year. The company also remains on the road to success in international key account management, where both existing contracts were extended on a long-term basis and attractive new major customers were acquired. 

The core of BERNER’s business model is personal consulting with 5,500 sales specialists on-site. Despite difficult conditions in the recruitment of specialised staff, BERNER Group has succeeded in increasing the number of its sales representatives by 4%. At the same time, BERNER Group is increasingly expanding its alternative sales channels. In countries such as France, and Luxembourg, telesales, depots, eProcurement, etc, already account for over 40% of total sales. In the first half of the current financial year, the group once again achieved strong double digit growth in eCommerce. The share of online trade in the BERNER Group has thus risen to a good 17% overall. In an increasing number of business units (including Italy, France and Benelux) at least 20% of income comes from the Internet. 

The European and, above all, the German political framework conditions have massively curbed demand in the construction sector. The combination of excessive regulation and ecological ideology, together with the energy and inflation/interest rate crises, is impacting the construction industry to an unprecedented extent. In the automotive sector, the hasty and isolated focus purely on eMobility is leading to a massive manufacturing and sales crisis. The inadequate energy policy is also having a massive impact on the production of raw materials in the chemical industry and is drastically worsening production conditions. 

“In view of the generally difficult conditions, I am extremely proud of the performance that my team has achieved in the first half of the year. We are still doing well here and are therefore currently still one of the profitably growing players in our industry,” states Christian Berner, CEO at BERNER Group. “The fact is, however, that we are fighting against a massively collapsing market. The economic situation in Germany, and Europe, is extremely dramatic, while international competition is advancing mercilessly. We are threatened by a deindustrialisation tsunami – with serious consequences in terms of prosperity and employment. The current left/green political orientation in Germany and Europe is also jeopardising social peace and social cohesion.”