Fundamentals of the KION Group

The accounting policies used in this interim report are essentially the same as those used for the year ended December 31, 2021. The reporting currency is the euro.

Management and control

Anke Groth, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Labor Relations Director of KION GROUP AG, ended her work for KION GROUP AG with effect from March 31, 2022, before the end of her contract, in order to pursue new challenges outside the Group. Until a successor has been appointed, her tasks will be carried out by the Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Richard Robinson Smith, on an interim basis.

Various aspects of the Executive Board’s schedule of responsibilities were changed with effect from July 1, 2022. The current schedule of responsibilities is available on the KION Group’s website.

The Annual General Meeting on May 11, 2022 re-elected Birgit A. Behrendt, Dr. Alexander Dibelius, Dr. Michael Macht, and Tan Xuguang to the Supervisory Board of KION GROUP AG for a further five years. In addition, elections were held for all employee representative seats on the Supervisory Board of KION GROUP AG for the five-year term of office commencing May 11, 2022. Stefan Casper, Olaf Kunz, and Dr. Frank Schepp left the Supervisory Board. The new members elected were Jan Bergemann, Dominique Lembke, and Thomas Mainka. All other employee representatives were re-elected to the Supervisory Board.

Strategy of the KION Group

The KION Group is playing a central role in shaping the future of the global material handling market with its KION 2027 strategy. By evolving into a solution provider in both of its operating segments, the KION Group is aiming to grow at a faster pace than the global market and, relative to other companies in the sector, achieve a high level of profitability while maintaining a focus on sustainability. At the same time, it continually strives to improve the return on capital employed (ROCE) and its resilience in different market cycles.

Six fields of action have been defined – energy, digitalization, automation, innovation, performance, and sustainability – for which a wide range of strategic measures were again implemented in the reporting period. There was also a continued focus on capital expenditure in order to enduringly strengthen the KION Group’s position in the market.

In the energy (new energy) field, the KION Group is forging ahead with the development and refinement of energy-efficient drive solutions, from internal combustion engines to various electric drive systems and fuel cells. During the first half of 2022, KION Battery Systems GmbH launched a second production line for lithium-ion batteries that will be used to power mobile warehouse trucks.

In the digitalization field, the KION Group’s priorities include gearing its business to customers’ increasingly digitalized processes in order to improve their intralogistics efficiency. Dematic, for example, entered into a partnership with Google Cloud in June with the aim of accelerating cloud innovations and using these to develop the next generation of warehouse management solutions.

In the automation field, the KION Group provides customer-specific and scalable solutions catering to customers’ wide-ranging requirements. Among other initiatives, the Linde and STILL brand companies added new autonomous mobile robots to their product portfolio.

The Innovation field is focused on the development of cross-segment technologies for tomorrow’s material handling market. One of the main activities in this regard was the European research project IMOCO, which is aimed at enabling trucks to navigate autonomously with the aid of artificial intelligence (AI).

In the performance field, the KION Group continued its work on developing a global platform for the value segment. The relocation of the production of STILL reach trucks to Stříbro in the Czech Republic is progressing as planned. At the Châtellerault plant in France, the automated production of pallet trucks went into operation in the reporting period.

Sustainability, which is enshrined in the KION 2027 strategy, was designated a separate field of action in 2021. The groupwide sustainability report, which was published in April 2022, provides information on the sustainability strategy.