Impressive Employees
Sustainable Impact
Our Vision
We create change
Dear Readers,
2023 was a very successful year both in terms of our business and the delivery of our group's global goals. Together with our Heinemann teams and partners worldwide, we are actively shaping our industry for the successful future of travel retail.
In 2023, we increased our turnover by 25 percent to 3.6 billion euros and had several occasions to celebrate, as we continued to open new and additional shops as well as invested in the modernization of space across airports in Australia, Malaysia, Norway, Italy, and Germany. Additionally, we have strengthened our group's portfolio through diversifying investments in the Czech Republic, our strongest border-shop market, and by becoming a partner and 50 percent shareholder of the NOBILIS GROUP, a leading distributor and service partner for beauty brands in the German-speaking domestic market. Furthermore, we have succeeded in gaining a foothold in growth markets across the Middle East and Africa, with new partnerships and concession wins in the cruises and airports channel.
As one of the market leaders, we live collaboration in the interest of our industry and especially in the interest of travelers, with whom we constantly strive to build closer and more personal relationships. With this in mind, we are proud of our investment in Duffle, a platform that digitizes the travel retail shopping experience as a globally connected solution across the entire customer journey. Another important part of our financial and personal investment in our industry is our ongoing commitment to our associations, first and foremost the European Travel Retail Confederation. We will continue to do everything in our power to ensure a successful future for our industry in addition to the success of our group of companies.
We are driven by our mission statement and we put our value proposition into practice every day. Our vision of transforming travel time into valuable time requires diversity and innovation and is being realized in various pilot projects and milestones at our locations. Here, the teams have pushed performance standards to new horizons — from experience-based shop concepts to new collaborations around our industry-wide commitment to sustainability with global powerhouse L'Oréal.
In order to fulfill our vision of focusing on being human-centric and culturally driven and to take our role as Gebr. Heinemann to the next level worldwide, we have created the position of Vice President People & Culture. We attach great importance to cultivating an environment of respect and authenticity, valuing personal interactions, and actively contributing to global society by strengthening our pledge of diversity and inclusion. As a family business with a special emphasis on and responsibility for our people, we are all the more affected by geopolitical and regional crises, even if we have to understand them as one aspect of a global industry. We are very worried about our colleagues, partners, and friends suffering from the conflicts in Israel and Gaza as well as in Ukraine and other parts of the world. Our sympathy goes out to all those affected and we wish for a swift end to the violence and a return to peace.
We will take the strong tailwind from 2023 into this year to further develop our global organization, and new and existing partnerships in order to continue growing across all regions and channels. We look forward to the expected upturn in Asia. In addition, we will continue to work hard on implementing the promises made in our mission statement in order to further raise our profile as the most human-centric company in global travel retail. And thus take our role and interaction with travelers to the next level.
Sincerely yours,
Max Heinemann & Raoul Spanger
