ONsite 44 PETplanet Insider Vol. 24 No. 09/23 www.petpla.net New setup in East Africa With the KHS2025 strategy program, the turnkey supplier aims to strengthen its customer relations. KHS is doing so by implementing an extensive package of measures. These include expanding and further qualifying its network and standardising structures and processes as well as hiring more personnel worldwide. Occupancy of a completely new building has just been taken up in Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya. This is where KHS’ new offices in East Africa have gradually taken shape over the past few months for a subsidiary that’s grown by over 50% in the last ten years. The decision to expand reached back in 2019 and was followed by a long search for a suitable plot of land. “We finally found a suitable and pleasant location in Nairobi’s green belt,” says Denise Schneider-Walimohamed, who runs the site as its managing director. By holding an architectural competition among local bureaus for the new commission, she ensured that the new building sported an attractive design and was built to have a low environmental impact and fit in with the regional style. “We’ve created about 2,000m2 of office, storage and training space on a site measuring just under 5,000m2,” Schneider-Walimohamed explains. “We now have an extensive assembly and spare parts warehouse that supports us during installation, commissioning and service. Plus, we have the offices needed to house our new technical sales personnel, layouters and project managers who are key to creating our vision of One KHS. In order to achieve a stronger global orientation, we are trying to make existing international structures even more useful for us and to take aspects such as locality and cultural conditions into account even more intensively. Reliable Partner remains the core of our activities. In the future, we will see even more growth in regions outside Europe.” The Nairobi site expansion includes also a completely new training center. “We’ve set up a training hub here that’s also available to other KHS business centers outside Kenya,” states Daniella Pleitz, who as general manager operates the KHS facility together with her sister. “Both ourselves and our customers benefit from this. With our full-time instructors trained and certified in Germany we’re well able to meet our local intensive training requirements.” The rooms have been designed for a number of different uses, proving a suitable venue not just for further training courses but also customer presentations, workshops and expert talks, claims Schneider-Walimohamed, who’s looking forward to staging lots of events here in the future. “From our employees’ point of view, this commitment is a further example of what an attractive and sustainable employer we are. In a country where there’s a lot of fluctuation on the job market, having an image like this can’t be valued highly enough,” she believes. The statistics prove her right: over 70% of the 65 people here have worked for KHS for over nine years – with this figure hopefully to increase with the new offices now up and running. KHS serves 17 countries in the region, and all customers therein. These countries are Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Madagascar, Reunion, Comores, Seychelles, Malawi, Mauritius, Eritrea. Other countries in Africa are served by their respective KHS Business Centre. “The market in PET is still growing in the region. PET is an investment friendly package for an ever-growing population. Pan African expansions are also visible and that will be the trend on the next years. At the moment KHS has a market share of around 20%”, SchneiderWalimohamed summarised. www.khs.com Denise Schneider-Walimohamed, Managing Director (left), and Daniella Pleitz, General Manager, both KHS East Africa
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