STINNES LAUNCHES E-COMMERCE INITIATIVES

STINNES LAUNCHES E-COMMERCE INITIATIVES    Germany’s Stinnes AG group, the parent company of Schenker, said that it is launching e-commerce initiatives to capitalize on changes in electronic trading and logistics.
   Wulf H. Bernotat, chief executive officer of Stinnes, declared that the top priority for Stinnes in the year 2000 was the entire group’s entry into electronic commerce via the Internet.
   “One of the most powerful drivers in the logistics market is the current boom in Internet trading, and in particular the business-to-business sector,” Bernotat told the company’s annual stockholders meeting.
   In February, Stinnes launched an initiative called “BOOST” to examine a variety of business options in the business-to-business sector, with a view to initiating concrete projects in all of the group’s divisions.
   Stinnes is looking at three levels of involvement in e-commerce. These are:
   * Optimizing current IT-based business processes and making customer processes accessible via the Internet, where this makes sense;
   * Extending the scope of Stinnes’s activities by adding new, Internet-based services, including the provision of logistics solutions for Internet marketplaces by the group’s transportation division;
   * And developing the group’s own Internet businesses, such as establishing trade platforms or participating in the operation of such platforms.
   Stinnes has agreed to cooperate with GrowNex AG, a German electronic marketplace for the food industry. The Stinnes group’s global air and sea freight arm will transport the food products from the areas where they are grown to the sites where they are traded, and Schenker will store the products until they are sold.
   Bernd H. Flickinger, an executive responsible for the logistics, purchasing and IT activities of the BASF group, will become a member of the board of management of Stinnes on Sept. 1, where he will manage the group’s e-commerce activities at board level.