About us
Ahlers has been helping clients with one common goal; finding the best solutions that fit our customers’ profile perfectly. We enable our customers to stay focused on their core business by creating and managing innovative solutions which add value and solve their supply chain challenges in complex environment.
History
Founded in 1909 in the Port of Antwerp, Ahlers operates in 3 regions (Europe, CIS, Asia) helping customers to drive future growth in complex markets, Ahlers is a family-owned company, 3rd generation Ahlers-Leysen, headquartered in Antwerp, Belgium, supported by a worldwide partner network and offices in key locations.
Originally, Ahlers started as agency operations. Bureau Maritime H.D opened in Antwerp and became one of Antwerp’s leading shipping agencies in the 1930s. In 1952 Mr. André Leysen, son-in-law of Herwig Ahlers joined Ahlers and became chairman in 1963. In the sixties and seventies, Ahlers transformed from an agency to ship management. They acquired two ice-class ships for the liner service to Finland. Ahlers also entered the liner trade to the USSR (via Latvian ports) and Sweden. Ship management activities were developed for a fleet of reefer ships and bulk carriers ordered at Belgian yards. From the eighties until today, Ahlers continued to extend their international footprint across Europe, the CIS, Russia, and Asia.
For more than 110 years Ahlers has been helping customers all over the world. Ahlers is part of the AXE Group which also includes Xylos (an ICT service provider), AXE Investments (an investment company), and Agidens (automatization projects). Consolidated accounts of Ahlers' parent company Anacom bvba are available on request. Anacom bvba is a holding company controlled by Christian Leysen, Executive Chairman.
We provide state-of-the-art logistics support in sustainable supply chain management, warehousing, projects, and machinery logistics, secured transport, trade logistics, after-sales services, and data analytics.
Board of Directors
Ahlers nv is the Belgian holding company of the Ahlers companies worldwide. The board members are:
- Christian Leysen, Chairman
- Nathalie Leysen, Board member, Senior recruitment consultant ServiceA
- Patrick Leysen, Board member, CEO Xylos
- Johan Vanderplaetse, Board member, Senior Vice President, President for Russia & CIS Schneider Electric
- Jan Vercammen, Board member, former CEO Egemin Automation, former Vice President Business Development Dematic
- Kurt Pierloot, Board member, CEO van Bleckmann, also on the board of Recticel
Inauguration of the new regional headquarters office for Russia and CIS in Saint Petersburg
With its 3,5 million euro investment, the new headquarters is the largest office building and biggest investment into office facilities for Ahlers in recent years. The Ahlers new office, the largest in the group, designed for future growth, offers 3.000 m² of contemporary workspace, including break-out rooms, a state-of-the-art auditorium, a green room for video conferencing, and much more.
The new workspace comes with plenty of excitement and flexibility. Open spaces will allow our employees to get together and play with new ideas, whereas more intimate spaces will allow them to be uninterrupted, concentrate and drive innovation, which is at the core of the Ahlers' strategy.
The new headquarters will not only service Russia but also the wider CIS region. It will represent a natural gateway to support our Western European and Asian client base and marks another important step of the Ahlers' growth in the region.
Need more information? Download our brochure
English version: Tailor-Made Solutions Beyond Logistics
Corporate brochure Edition 2021