September 2021

Above: Arnd Franz, inset; Dominick Zarcone W hile the familiar face of LKQ Euro Car Parts will be your local branch, or perhaps more accurately the delivery van, there is a lot more going on behind the scenes, on a global scale. With this in mind, Dominick Zarcone, Global president and CEO of LKQ Corporation, and LKQ Europe CEO Arnd Franz recently sat down with journalists from leading sector titles from a wide range of European countries, including Aftermarket representing the UK. Topics under discussion including LKQ’s business strategy and sustainability ambitions, of course how the business has been managing during the coronavirus pandemic. Starting with the impact of COVID-19 on the business, Dominick Zarcone said: “We are not quite back to pre- COVID-19 levels of revenue, but the last three quarters were the best in the company's 23-year history in terms of profits and cash flow, and that accomplishment is due to the courageous work of our employees across the globe.” He continued: “Going forward, we have four key strategic pillars. First, grow the customer offering, which includes more than just selling and distributing parts. We want to provide value-added services to garages to help our customers be more productive more efficient and more competitive. Second, we are going to continue to expand the geographic markets in which we participate. Our focus has been and will continue to be on Europe. Third is we need to adapt to the evolving vehicle trends and technology, whether it's connectivity, ADAS, electric vehicles, autonomous, fleet ownership or rideshare utilization. There's no shortage of changes in the automotive marketplace and all of those changes represent unique opportunities for LKQ, which we are going to take advantage of. The fourth strategic pillar is to rationalize the asset base, to gain more productivity from our operations.” Expanding on this fourth pillar Arnd Franz observed: “What has been going on for LKQ in the past two years is a big integration, bringing together all the great things that have been acquired by LKQ over the past 10 years. We started with Euro Car Parts in 2011, the last big acquisition was the acquisition of Stahlgruber, together with PV Automotive in Germany. “We started the 1LKQ Europe programme in 2019, and just recently we were able to complete a big part of that. We can now present to our customers an organization that spans Europe that is looking in each one of our functions for best-in-class practices and new scale to do new things to please our customers. What will remain is the proximity to all the local people, all the local workshops, the local entrepreneurs, the people and businesses that are acting in each one of the markets and what will also stay the same is the entrepreneurial spirit of the people at LKQ that work in the 20 markets that were active with.” On the thinking behind 1LKQ Europe, Dominick commented: “We had bought what we believe were the 20 AFTERMARKET SEPTEMBER 2021 BUSINESS www.aftermarketonline.net LKQ EURO CAR PARTS ROUND-TABLE LKQ Europe, the parent company of LKQ Euro Car Parts recently sat down with journalists from across the continent, and Aftermarket was there