Voith and US logistics group C. H. Robinson close partnership for digital commerce

Voith continues to expand its digital agenda and extends the range of its trading platform for recovered paper (RCP) merQbiz. For this purpose, merQbiz and the American logistics provider C. H. Robinson have agreed to an exclusive cooperation: the customers are now offered unmatched freight capacity, competitive real-time pricing and a powerful supply chain network to the platform.

“The fact that we were able to win C. H. Robinson, one of the world’s largest logistics groups, as a partner for our digital trading platform shows that we have hit a nerve in the market with merQbiz,” says Dr. Hubert Lienhard, CEO of Voith GmbH & Co. KGaA.

The B2B-trading-platform merQbiz was launched in 2017 by Voith. It connects buyers and sellers of recovered paper in a digital marketplace. The platform gives buyers and sellers the ability to directly network with one another and access timely and reliable information about the supply and demand of recovered paper.

In addition, users can securely conduct their sales and purchasing transactions on the trading platform. Similar to the well-known online marketplaces, merQbiz evaluates the merchants, the buyers and the quality of the goods. This ensures a high level of security for all goods, logistics and payment flows as well as a high degree of transparency and professional handling. In the medium term, the trading platform’s offers will also be available to customers outside the United States.

As a result of the expansion of the product range to include integrated logistics solutions, merQbiz now also offers the automation and improvement of previously manually performed logistics processes on a user-friendly digital platform.

Absolute transparency in the market now applies not only to the pricing of recovered paper, but also to the shipping costs – competitive pricing is carried out in real time and customers receive prompt transport offers that match with their trading order.

The group serves more than 113,000 customers worldwide today with logistic solution. 2,600 thereof are in the paper, board and packaging industry. In the last business year C.H. Robinson generated sales of approx. 10 billion Euros.

“The integrated logistics solution is a game-changer for the industry. The supply of recovered paper will become even more predictable for our customers in the paper industry“, said John Fox, CEO of merQbiz.

In addition to its existing research and development budget, Voith invests around 100 million euros annually in digital products and services.