Geest North Sea Line Strengthens Sales Team

European intermodal operator Geest North Sea Line strengthened its sales team in Germany. Jürgen Reinke has been promoted to the position of General Sales Manager for Germany and will be based in Geest's Duisburg office effective 1 April, 2004, and Frank Possel has been appointed as Regional Account Manager, located in Hamburg. Reinke joined Geest in 2002 as Regional Account Manager for the Ruhr area. His early career was in the Hamburg freight forwarding community followed by sales positions with RoRo ferry and trailer operators PTI Portbridge, Norfolkline and DFDS. Possel has joined Geest from Seawheel. "Central and Southern Germany, especially the Ruhr region, have always been important markets for Geest but we now find that we are increasingly competitive in Northern Germany too. The ever rising costs associated with road haulage are definitely favouring those transport operators with strong intermodal capabilities and we certainly count ourselves as one of these operators,” said Commercial Director, Gerard de Groot. "Putting a salesman in Hamburg also reflects the growing significance of those countries to the east of Germany that are soon to join the EU. We are seeing a major shift of manufacturing capacity to these locations and their transport requirements will be huge. Given the longer distances involved, rail and barge options for container transport are being examined very closely."