• Group functions plus four regional operating units in future
• KION CEO Gordon Riske: "We are stepping up collaboration across all brands and regions and making it more efficient"
• Andreas Krinninger to become President Linde Material Handling EMEA; future President of STILL EMEA to be announced shortly
• New organisation to start taking shape in 2016 as part of the Strategy 2020
Wiesbaden, 26 November 2015 - The KION Group is sharpening its focus on the specific customer and market requirements of the key regions of the world and on cross-brand synergies with a comprehensive reorganisation of the group structure. In future, the Wiesbaden, Germany-based Group will be organised into group functions, such as Research and Development, Procurement, Quality Management, Finance, HR and IT, plus four operating units: Linde Material Handling EMEA and STILL EMEA, which will each concentrate on Europe, the Middle East and Africa, plus KION APAC and KION Americas, which will hold cross-brand responsibility for the Asia-Pacific region and the Americas respectively. The KION Group, one of the world's two leading suppliers of forklift trucks, warehouse technology and related services, will start to put the new structures in place at the beginning of 2016 as part of its Strategy 2020.

In the new organisation, the operating units will oversee marketing, sales and service as well as production in their regions and will have individual P&L responsibility. They will be supported by the group administrative functions and the KION Research and Development, Procurement, Quality and Production Processes technical functions, which have been centrally managed under Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Eike Böhm since August 2015. On the KION Group Executive Board, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Gordon Riske will have responsibility for the Linde Material Handling EMEA, STILL EMEA and KION Americas units, while Chief Asia-Pacific Officer (C-APAC-O) Ching Pong Quek will be responsible for the KION APAC unit. Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Labour Relations Director Thomas Toepfer will continue to be in charge of Accounting, Control and Finance, Legal, IT and HR.

"The new organisational structure will enable us to focus even better on the specific requirements of our customers around the world and to harness cross-brand potential," said KION CEO Gordon Riske. "We will continue to step up our collaboration across all brands and regions and make this collaboration more efficient, which will benefit our customers, our partners and, of course, our employees. We are confident that by taking these steps we will be in a better position to achieve the objectives of our Strategy 2020 and will secure our long-term success."
The new Group Executive Committee (GEC), which advises the KION Executive Board and integrates input from the operating units, will have a central role. The committee is appointed by the KION Group Executive Board and consists of the KION Executive Board and the Presidents of the operating units.

Andreas Krinninger, who is currently CFO of Linde Material Handling, will be President of the Linde Material Handling EMEA operating unit from 1 January 2016. The corresponding role of President of the STILL EMEA operating unit will be filled by an external appointment who will be joining the KION Group during 2016. Furthermore, Mr. Krinninger and the future President of STILL EMEA are taking over as managing directors of the brand companies from KION CEO Gordon Riske, who has been in charge of them since January on an interim basis.