When Henning Thormählen joined TRATON in the summer of 2021, the Group was in the midst of a fundamental change. It was no longer simply a manufacturer of commercial vehicles with combustion engines, but was instead on the way to becoming a future-ready mobility provider, developing battery electric drives, autonomous driving systems, and new business models.
The department headed by Henning Thormählen played a key part in this transformation. Mergers & Acquisitions was responsible for the transactions that had a decisive impact on the change process — for example, the department managed the takeover of International (known at the time as Navistar). It also set up joint ventures such as Milence, helped to establish TRATON Financial Services, and pushed through internal restructuring measures, in particular the creation of the Group-wide R&D organization (Group R&D).
“M&A transactions are a key component of the TRATON strategy and therefore have a decisive influence on our ongoing transformation process,” says Thormählen, who is an expert on strategy.
TRATON Financial Services — the gamechanger
TRATON Financial Services (TFS) is of crucial importance to the transformation. The establishment of the financial services organization under the TRATON umbrella not only created a joint framework for the financial and service offerings of the different brands, but also enabled TRATON itself to become a service provider.
TFS offers its customers financing solutions for alternative drives and also supports new business models, such as Transport-as-a-Service. This allows companies to book transportation capacity to meet their needs instead of buying or leasing their own vehicles.
“New business models like Transport-as-a-Service are gaining traction. At the same time, customers are experiencing higher procurement costs as they electrify their truck fleets,” explains Thormählen. “We need to be able to respond to all these developments and this is why an integrated, in-house financial services offering is crucial to our success. It enables us to work closely with our sales teams and to offer every customer a tailor-made service.”
Milence — a genuine milestone
The establishment of Milence, the charging network operator which is a joint venture involving the TRATON GROUP, Daimler Truck, and the Volvo Group, was a particular challenge for Thormählen.
“It was a really interesting project, because we started completely from scratch,” he recalls. “We were and still are all competitors in the market for trucks with combustion engines, but we began working together in a new area and set up a company with the aim of creating an electric charging infrastructure covering the whole of Europe.”
After the legal issues had been resolved, the implementation process began. “We had no blueprint for what we were planning to do. Our job was to establish a company, recruit a CEO and a CFO, and find a site so that the company could start work immediately and focus on the task at hand. It was almost like a start-up. I’m really pleased to see what Milence has achieved since then.”
The three pillars of TRATON’s future success
Because of its work in the field of M&A, TRATON has now achieved one of its long-term strategic goals: The takeover of International enabled the Group to develop a strong presence in the USA. “Moving into the North American market was a very important step for us,” says Thormählen.
He believes that the three most important aspects of the TRATON Way Forward strategy over the next few years are the Chinese market, the Group’s internal organization, and technological innovations.
In 2025, TRATON took a strategic step by opening its production site in the Chinese city of Rugao. The plant will manufacture Scania products, as well as a completely new model known as NEXT ERA. “Our presence in China gives us two decisive advantages: Access to one of the largest markets in the world and the possibility of benefiting from the country’s immense innovative capability.”
Thormählen also sees significant development potential in the Group’s internal structures, such as Group Industrial Functions: “By integrating corporate functions we can become even stronger.”
He also believes that ongoing technological development is particularly important. TRATON is on the right path with regard to electric vehicles and it also plans to make significant progress in the field of autonomous driving over the next decade, with initial road tests already underway.
“We have already laid the foundations in three areas that will be crucial to our future,” says Thormählen. “This is why I am convinced that TRATON will continue to be successful over the next ten years.”
