ARTICLE
1000+ attendees. 44 countries. 858 one-to-one meetings. 3643 connections. 3 stages and 4 workshops, across 2 days.
The summit opened on 16 March with the Startup of the Year Award. Five companies – LogiBot, k2.mobility, Senvo, Osmosis AI and Fastport – pitched to a panel including Matthias Schanze of rethink Ventures, Christian Oestergaard of PostNord and Thierry Golliard of Swiss Post.
Matthias set the bar: “The quality of startups in the industry has gone significantly up. Previously, they had a technical idea and were convinced someone would pop up and buy it – but that has changed.” Christian was looking for one thing: simplicity.
Senvo won with 31% of the vote.
Richard Lim of Retail Economics opened. Okan Inaltay of ComCap read where the money is moving: “Private equity players are back in logistics, targeting more specialised, tech-enabled platforms.” Karl Pfaff of GLS Group: “Agentic AI doesn’t end at the product – it includes all things delivery.” Chris Peeters of bnode was blunter: “If you remain a traditional postal operator, you don’t have a future anymore.“
The leaders’ forum – Karsten Schwarz of DPD Germany, Nils Thiesen of Rhenus, Meagan Fitzsimmons of GXO Logistics, Severin Bredahl-Banovic of HERE Technologies – ran through geopolitical disruption, Chinese parcel volumes, worker shortages and AI. Karsten: “To create a competitive advantage, you need to create something that isn’t copiable immediately.“
The afternoon spread across four stages. On the Pink Stage, Andrew Sheremetyev of Zalando on AI-driven warehouse design, then a fireside on the safety-productivity trade-off with James Wyatt of Powerfleet and Professor René de Koster of Rotterdam School of Management. The panel – Clare Bottle of the UK Warehousing Association, Thomas Vermersch of FM Logistic, Simoni Stathatou of Maersk – on growing complexity in warehousing and fulfilment.
On the Blue Stage, the Smart Sustainability session opened with Meagan Fitzsimmons of GXO Logistics, then a panel with Karin Enzlin of bpost, Luke Lloyd of International Post Corporation and Andrea Condotta of GRUBER Logistics. The EV charging question – how do you charge your vans when you have neither the space nor the grid capacity onsite – ran through the session without resolution.
On the Green Stage, the delivery CX session with Sanae Murschel of La Poste Colissimo, Oliwia Guziel of Decathlon Czech Republic, Kieran McGough of JD Sports, Alexander Van Schie of PostNL and Luke Duffell of NiCE. PostNL’s “best day” positioning drew sustained pushback on whether it holds when most consumers still decide on price. Mike Richmond of Royal Mail stated his ambition plainly: “Our 2030 goal is to be the nation’s go-to delivery service. We’ve historically been default – now we want to be preferred.“
The OOH session brought Henning Gaudszuhn of DHL eCommerce, Laurens Himpe of bpost, Harm Schokker of PostNL and Hervé Crochet of Geopost onto the same stage. Locker standardisation, interoperability and the fragmentation of carrier networks across the same cities drew pointed questions from the audience. Henning: “You need to win checkout – you need to be present and have the right solutions.“
The Cross-Border session – Elke Segers of Landmark Global, Jean-Paul Forceville of La Poste, Wim van de Sande of PostNL, Grzegorz Szaton of Allegro, Caroline Chester of Shoosmiths – covered de minimis reform, ICS2 compliance, tariff volatility and returns complexity. The audience question that cut through: has the EU flat-rate duty on low-value items ended the ultra-cheap cross-border model? Nobody said no.
The HERE Technologies AI workshop, chaired by Bart Coppelmans and opened by Cosimo Birtolo of Poste Italiane, ran all afternoon around one question: why do most AI pilots never reach production? André of CTT: “For pilots to succeed, we need short-term projects, see quick results and learn from the issues.” Simon of Bettermile: “To have the AI itself is nothing without having the data coming from the ground up.“
The Marketplace Logistics Forum, chaired by Julie Coxhill of Parcel2Go.com, was a closed working session for marketplace logistics leaders on carrier orchestration, SLA enforcement, failover protocols and compensation complexity. Not a panel. A working session.
Day one closed with reverse logistics. Leslie Rubio Olvera of DHL Supply Chain, Corinne Gonin of Parcel Pending by Quadient, Rebecca Hope of Royal Mail and Ole Kulinski of Arvato. The question from the floor that stayed in the room: “We’ve spent so long making the returns process easier – did we actually make the problem worse?“
On the afternoon of Day 2, a group of attendees left the building to visit bpost’s bbox boutique in Brussels – a parcel locker designed to function as a retail destination rather than street furniture. The tour filled up fast. More opportunities like these are planned for Amsterdam.
Bernhard Bukovc of Postal Innovation Platform opened Day 2, followed by the Space for Logistics and Innovation Task Force announcement with Rita Rinaldo of the European Space Agency and Fernando Liesa of ALICE. Simon Lemmen of Deutsche Post DHL and Hannes Rosskopf of Blue Yonder followed on the future of e-commerce and the shift from infrastructure to intelligence.
The digital transformation leaders’ forum – Andreas Thöni of Österreichische Post, André Gagnon Esteves of CTT, Nigel Rouch of XPO, Han Hendriks of Geotab – covered sequencing of modernisation initiatives, data maturity as a prerequisite for AI deployment, and cloud strategy. Han: “AI isn’t a train, it’s a rocket that has been launched and you have to be on the rocket to participate.” Nigel: “The way to maximise value from AI is training employees to ask it the right questions.“
The Retailer-LSP session – chaired by Charles Brewer of Pos Malaysia, with Abbas Tolouee of Arvato and Darren Hall of B&Q – got into gainshare mechanics, accountability when things go wrong, and how you keep a long-standing partner performing when switching costs are high. Several conversations continued well past the end of the session.
The Fulfilment panel – Tom Killeen of THG Brands, Rob Conijn of Herbalife, Martin Seidel of DHL Supply Chain, Petra Dobrocka of byrd, Claire Prance of Uniserve – covered omnichannel inventory, peak volatility, decentralised fulfilment and integrating returns without letting them dominate the operation.
The Workforce session – Natalia Navin of Pos Malaysia, Jesper Bang-Olsen of Beam, Alexandra Weth of Swiss Post – covered digital workforce readiness, cobots and wearables, and what scaling without proportional headcount actually requires of people managers.
The Navigating USO Reform workshop, chaired by Derek Osborn of Whatnext4u with Marion Brouwer of PostNL, brought postal operators together on what a parcel-first future requires of organisations built around universal service. The eFTI workshop, chaired by Fernando Liesa of ALICE with Villu Varjas of the European Commission, ran alongside it on preparing for digital freight documentation ahead of the 2027 go-live.
The Last Mile session – Simone Oloman of Need It For Tonight, An de Wispelaere of PTV Logistics, then a panel with Sven Kukemelk of Omniva, Gregor Hueber of Österreichische Post, Themistoklis Meletiou of Kotsovolos and Dr. Yanying Li of ALICE – closed the Pink and Green stages.
The summit ended with Session 8. Professor Alan McKinnon of Kühne Logistics University on balancing resilience, connectivity and decarbonisation. Professor Eric Ballot of MINES ParisTech on the physical internet. Fernando Liesa of ALICE on innovation that scales.
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