The Automotive Logistics Central Europe 2007 conference was held on October 24 and 25 at the Grand Hotel Bernardin in Portoroz, Slovenia and many of the delegates have said that they found that event beneficial, interesting and enjoyable.

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Delegates gathered in Portoroz, Slovenia, near the Port of Koper for the 2007 Automotive Logistics Central Europe conference to discuss the logistics challenges facing growth and expansion from the Czech Republic to Romania, Russia, and even Central Asia. Arthur Maher from JD Power & Associates gave figures that show substantial growth in the region both for new car sales and production. Sales have doubled in a decade, to close to four million units, even while car saturation remains low. Production will increase to 5.5 million units in the short term, and is expected to reach eight million units by 2014. Meanwhile, some of this growth has come at the expense of traditional production regions like France and the UK.

General Motors's Peter Koncsik told LSPs where their opportunities will be. He said that more than 500,000 GM cars would be transported in Central and Eastern Europe in 2007, highlighting enormous growth in Russia but also in Romania and former Yugoslavian countries. He also outlined current production, as well as new plants scheduled to come on line in Russia and the CIS. Logistics, he said, is a part of GM's forward strategy for expansion in Eastern Europe.

He added that GM's essential reasoning for building plants is based on where people are buying cars, where there is an educated labour force, and also where the company can have an efficient parts supply close to the plant.

Two other important regions discussed that stretch east beyond EU boundaries were the Black Sea and Turkey. Peter Menzel from K-Line (Europe) discussed the emergence of Illychevsk as an important hub for the Russian and Ukranian markets. This year has been a "breakthrough," he said, and predicted the port would handle 180,000 cars in 2008. But though the port is developing, he expressed concern for inland logistics. "Since inland has no capacity, and you're pumping in thousands of cars every week, it is a big problem," he said. "There are no proper railways. The network is there, but no one has invested in the cars. Nothing has happened."

Menzel and others also described the export growth from Turkish production as booming. Ercan Tezer from the Automotive Manufacturers' Association of Turkey said that Turkey's medium-range goal was to increase exports from 800,000 to 1.5 million. However, delegates expressed concern about Turkish ports, none of which are large enough to handle these volumes.

Pelin Kocaalp from the office of the Turkish Prime Ministry, promised that infrastructure was on the agenda, though she admitted the government was not willing to build or improve ports without private investment as well.

Jan Huijgens of ArvinMeritor and Marco Ciafrei from Key Safety Systems (KSS) both described their companies' recent developments in lower-cost countries in Eastern Europe. Huijgens described the company's strategy of leveraging both global and local LSPs. "Local providers are strong in customised solutions, dedicated vehicles, and full truckloads point to point," he said. "They are much weaker with regards to doing part loads or developing groupage solutions."

KSS's Ciafrei said poor logistics infrastructure is often one of the reasons that a country might be low cost, and to be successful, the supplier base had to grow and move eastwards as well to realise the most efficient logistics strategy. "We need to grow our supplier base, because we need to be at the same level as we were before," he said. "It is not optional, it will need a further eastwards move. We need to grow up in this place, otherwise we will just change again to the next India or Africa."

Other issues at the centre of debate included increased visibility, standardisation for damage procedures, as well as rail and sea links to Russia.