Jungheinrich is looking back on a “solid first half” of the 2022 financial year. Despite the difficult conditions as a result of the Russia-Ukraine war, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the resulting disruptions to supply chains, the intralogistics group was able to increase its incoming orders and revenue.
The value of incoming orders improved by 2%, while group revenue rose 11%. However, significantly higher materials and logistics costs impacted the operating result, with profits falling 14.5%.
“Despite challenging conditions, Jungheinrich achieved a robust result in the first half of 2022,” explains Dr Lars Brzoska, chairman of the Board of Management of Jungheinrich AG. “Jungheinrich was able to increase its incoming orders and achieve good revenue growth. New truck business, particularly the very good growth in automated systems, was the main driver of the higher Group revenue. Notable contributions to the revenue increase also came from our short-term rental and used equipment business as well as the after-sales business field,” he explains.
To ensure its ability to deliver, Jungheinrich deliberately pushed the build-up of inventories during the first half of the year.
The company has placed its focus on optimising the construction of new trucks, as Jungheinrich has already done with its lithium-ion-integrated trucks in the POWERLiNE series. Additional key development areas for Jungheinrich are digital products, the automation of materials handling equipment and the optimisation of automated systems.
At the end of May, the company presented innovative mobile robot applications and the PowerCube compact container warehouse at the LogiMAT trade fair in Stuttgart. Jungheinrich also significantly increased its Research & Development expenditure in the first half of 2022 by 27%.
As part of the targeted expansion of its strategic fields of action, Jungheinrich continued to expand its workforce as planned in the first half of 2022. The number of employees in the Group increased by 297 full-time equivalents, or 1.6%, to 19,400.
Despite great economic uncertainty about the effects of the war on supply chains and on energy, raw materials and materials prices, Jungheinrich confirms its forecast for the 2022 financial year as a whole.
Jungheinrich currently expects incoming orders to be slightly below the level seen in the previous year.
In terms of the developments in the cost of materials, Jungheinrich expects the currently high levels to remain in place.