-> Sales contract concluded with an international leader in the sector.
-> The buyer upholds its social responsibilities and operates in line with long-term objectives / Managing Director Peter R. Lange ensures personnel continuity.
-> LOOMIS is a sufficiently large player in the market to ensure further growth.
-> Reconfiguration of the services group to respond to the future focus on digital technologies.
-> Strategic reinvestments made in Security 4.0 and system solutions.
Essen/Dortmund/Cologne/Bremen (17 January 2018). “The sector is currently undergoing a period of consolidation. For more than four decades, KÖTTER Cash and Valuables Services have been an important part of our business. Our family-run business has always successfully invested in up-and-coming areas, but we also know that considerable investment would be required if KÖTTER were to compete with the big players in the global market“, explained Friedrich P. Kötter, from the supervisory board of KÖTTER SE & Co. KG Security, speaking today in Essen on behalf of KÖTTER Geld- & Wertdienste SE & Co. KG.
LOOMIS is a business which fulfils its social responsibilities and operates according to long-term objectives. The business has sufficient weight in the global market, and will be able to benefit from the associated advantages to further develop this business sector, which KÖTTER has built up over a period of decades. In the long-term, LOOMIS will thus be able to maintain the approximate 800 jobs located in Aachen, Bremen, Dortmund, Düsseldorf-Duisburg, Cologne and Paderborn. “The issue of job security really is of the highest importance to us. We want to be sure that the KÖTTER Cash and Valuables Services will remain in good hands in the future“, explained Friedrich P. Kötter. Stability within the management of the business will help ensure this. As well as continuing in his current role as Managing Director of the KÖTTER Group, Peter R. Lange will now also become the Managing Director of LOOMIS Deutschland.
According to Friedrich P. Kötter, there can be no doubt that numerous business processes, such as payments in cash, will be increasingly digitalised: “We are certain that in Germany, cash and valuables services will still offer potential for added value for some time longer. In order to remain competitive in this sector in the long-term, however, businesses will need to have sufficient weight within the global market. This is something which LOOMIS has”, reported the security expert.
Protection from cybercrime and digitally-based system solutions are important fields of growth
“As a family-run business, we need to provide quicker and more sustainable solutions to the challenges posed by the digital world. This is one of the reasons why we’ve transferred the KÖTTER Cash and Valuables Services, founded more than 45 years ago, to LOOMIS. Subsequent reinvestment in new business areas will secure the future of the business and see us make gains in the markets for security and building services as digitalisation takes place“, emphasised Friedrich P. Kötter.
At the heart of our strategy is ‘Security 4.0’ and the expansion of “Smart Service Solutions”:
- ‘Security 4.0’: “Our staff’s use of the latest technology is already key to our security solutions. These services will be brought onto a whole new level, however, through the more widespread use of digital technologies”, explained Friedrich P. Kötter. Where exactly such developments will lead, is demonstrated by the new Alarm Monitoring Center in Essen. The Centre is making use of applications such as video management, and the Centre’s hi-tech work stations ensure that processes are optimised in the long-term, resulting in related increases in quality. “We will be consistently pursuing this strategic path”, emphasised Friedrich P. Kötter. “We will also see ‘Security 4.0’ offer solutions to the growing problems arising from cybercrime. That is to say, that we will increasingly draw on ‘pre-crime’ and ‘big data’ and so benefit from the possibility of using data to pre-empt and prevent crime and add to the momentum seen in the development of crime prevention.”
- Smart Service Solutions: This ‘digitalisation offensive’ will also play a significant role in the development of system solutions with Sparten Cleaning (e.g. maintenance and industrial cleaning, specialist solutions) and Personal Service (including shift work for commercial and business-based professions). The highly digitalised ‘Smart Service Solutions’ will offer customers immediate and multiple advantages in terms of efficiency and quality. Customers will benefit, for example, from digitalised quality controls, live access to information regardless of the time or place from which it is accessed, or the further optimisation of personnel management offered by one single provider.