Ms. Hilb will succeed Yann Bonguardo. She brings 26 years of experience in European rail logistics at DB Cargo, primarily in the areas of sales, customer service, freight wagon management, purchasing and digital transformation. She was responsible for various areas at DB Cargo AG and can look back on successes in the strategic and operational realignment of business areas as well as the sustainable optimization of business processes.
No wonder that the leading Swiss company says: “Wascosa AG is looking forward to further driving the planned growth strategy together with Ms. Iris Hilb and to successfully implementing the sustainable further development of the Wascosa Group with the newly acquired know-how”.
The family company Wascosa, headquartered in Lucerne, was founded in 1964 and is one of the industry pioneers in freight wagon leasing. The core business is the rental and management of freight wagons for rail transport throughout Europe. Every year, Wascosa procures modern freight wagons of all types with an investment value of over 150 million euros that meet the needs of the loading industry.
The fleet now includes over 15,000 wagons – from tank wagons for the chemical and petroleum industries to wagons for combined transport and wagons for bulk transport or infrastructure construction. Customers include chemical and mineral oil groups, industrial and logistics companies as well as private and state railway companies. More than 100 employees are employed at the locations in Lucerne, Hamburg, Hull (UK) and Madrid, who look after national and international customers.
The Wascosa management sets high standards for itself. “We are the pioneers and take this role seriously. That’s why you can expect more from us,” the company’s website quotes CEO Peter Balzer as saying. Wascosa repeatedly presents new developments to the public, for example a “safe tank car®” with derailment detectors, crash buffers with a particularly long deformation path, anti-climbing devices and telematics. Ms. Hilb, in turn, named her own leitmotif in an interview in 2021: “The focus is on the customer.” So that should go well together.
Hermann Schmidtendorf, Editor-in-Chief /wa
