European Intralogistics Talent Report 2026: Thirteen Markets, One Talent Shortage

Thirteen markets, one story. European intralogistics is investing through the cycle, reorganising for the next one, and quietly competing for the same small pool of commercial talent.

The thirteen country chapters that follow each pair a short commercial read with recent, publicly reported moves, every one linked to the original source. The interpretation is ours; the facts are not.

1. 01

   Europe is leading the recovery

   Warehouse automation order intake returned to growth in 2025, and EMEA carries the strongest regional forecast to 2030. The growth engine of this industry is not across the Atlantic. It is here.

   Source: Interact Analysis, 2026: Warehouse automation order intake up by 7%

2. 02

   The capital is visible on the ground

   TGW is spending 100 million euros on capacity in Austria, Toyota Material Handling is making its largest ever production investment in Sweden, TVH is building its biggest ever distribution centre in Belgium, and Exotec has opened a new global headquarters in France. These are physical, public commitments to European growth.

3. 03

   The industry is reorganising at the top

   Toyota Industries is unifying its warehouse automation businesses under Toyota Automated Logistics from April 2026, Swisslog and TGW have new leadership, and SSI Schaefer has a new management board. Reorganisation at this scale always moves commercial people, and creates openings behind them.

   Source: Toyota Industries Corporation, 2025: Toyota Industries Corporation to reorganize its warehouse automation business in Europe and the United States

4. 04

   Central Europe is the next commercial frontier

   Poland now hosts first-of-their-kind automation projects and a major shared-services hub, and the region's e-commerce build-out is pulling automation vendors east. Commercial coverage there is still thin relative to the opportunity.

5. 05

   The constraint is people, not products

   Mobile robots are forecast to grow at 19% a year to 2030. Every vendor in this report is chasing that growth with broadly similar technology. The differentiating asset is the commercial team, and it is the hardest part to scale.

   Source: Interact Analysis, 2026: Mobile robots market outpaces fixed automation with 19% annual growth to 2030

After a cautious 2024, the numbers turned in 2025, and the public forecasts now put Europe at the front of global warehouse automation growth.

Interact Analysis reports that warehouse automation order intake grew 7% year on year in 2025 after a decline in 2024, helped by large-scale investment from major retailers. Of the three global regions, EMEA carries the strongest forecast to 2030, at around 7% annual growth, ahead of the Americas and APAC. Within Europe, the Netherlands, Northern Europe and the UK are named as growth markets.

The forecast has since been raised again. In January 2026, Interact Analysis lifted its estimate for 2026 order intake growth to 6%, from 5% in its previous report, and revised 2024 upwards too: warehouse automation revenue actually grew by 1% that year, against the 3% decline previously predicted. The stability hides sharp sector differences, with grocery automation revenue growing by nearly 20% while parcel declined by nearly 15%. The firm's analysts now expect warehouse construction itself to turn the corner, which is the leading indicator the whole industry watches.

Robotics is the sharp end. Interact Analysis forecasts mobile robots growing at an average of 19% a year from 2024 to 2030, far outpacing fixed automation. That matters for talent because mobile robotics is sold consultatively, into operations and IT together, by exactly the kind of commercial people every vendor in this report is trying to hire.

The industry's own reading agrees. Toyota Material Handling Europe's Trends in Logistics 2025 report, launched at LogiMAT, describes a European sector reshaping itself around automation, energy transition and data, with labour scarcity as a recurring theme across markets.

What follows is a look at the labour market itself, then a market-by-market read of thirteen countries, through the lens we know best: the commercial people who sell automation, equipment, storage and software, and the employers competing for them.

The demand side of this report is measurable, and so is the supply side. The public labour market data shows why every commercial hire in European intralogistics now feels contested.

Start with the employer side. ManpowerGroup's 2026 Talent Shortage survey, run across 39,063 employers in 41 countries in October 2025, finds 72% of employers reporting difficulty finding the skilled talent they need. The European detail matters more than the headline: Germany comes in at 83%, France at 74% and the UK at 73%. The three largest intralogistics economies in this report are also among the hardest places on earth to fill a skilled role.

Eurostat's vacancy data adds the geography. In the first quarter of 2026 the euro area job vacancy rate stood at 2.3%, and the EU at 2.1%. The highest rate in the union was the Netherlands at 4.0%, with Belgium at 3.4% and Austria at 3.1%. Look back at the country chapters that follow: the Netherlands is Europe's systems integration capital, Belgium anchors parts and racking, and Austria hosts two foundation-owned automation world leaders. Vacancy pressure is most intense in exactly the markets where Europe's intralogistics capability is concentrated.

Poland is the counterpoint, with the lowest vacancy rate in the EU at 0.8%. For employers building Central European commercial coverage, that is hiring headroom no western European market can offer.

These are economy-wide figures, and in our experience they understate the niche. A commercial hire in intralogistics needs sector credibility on top of sales ability, which shrinks the pool further. When 83% of German employers already struggle to fill ordinary skilled roles, the contest for an automation salesperson with a project track record is sharper still.

Our home market, and still one of Europe's deepest pools of intralogistics commercial talent, with a dealer and service landscape that is consolidating fast.

The UK combines a very large installed base of forklifts and warehouses with one of Europe's most competitive dealer and service markets. That produces a distinctive commercial talent pool: field sellers who grew up on contested territory, and account managers used to defending fleets against three rival quotes. Ownership is shifting too, with private capital moving into the equipment and service layer.

For a fuller read on the UK, including roles in demand and career paths, see our UK Intralogistics Talent Report 2026. The moves below are the headlines since.

The heavyweight. Two of the world's largest intralogistics OEMs are German, and when they report growth, the whole European hiring market feels it.

Germany is the centre of gravity of European material handling. Jungheinrich and the KION Group between them span trucks, automation and software, and their commercial academies have trained a large share of the sector's salespeople across the continent. German-speaking commercial talent with automation credibility is among the most contested profiles in Europe.

The current signals point up. Jungheinrich closed 2025 with growth in orders and revenue despite a difficult market, and KION closed its own 2025 with order intake of €11.7 billion before opening 2026 with continued momentum. SSI Schaefer, the storage and systems giant, has restructured its leadership for the next phase.

Europe's systems integration capital, home to Vanderlande and a dense cluster of automation engineering, and now the stage for one of the sector's biggest reorganisations.

The Netherlands punches far above its size in intralogistics. Vanderlande in Veghel is one of the world's largest material handling systems companies, and the Dutch market is named by Interact Analysis among Europe's growth markets. Dutch commercial roles skew towards complex, long-cycle systems selling, and the talent pool is correspondingly senior.

The big story is structural. Toyota Industries is unifying its warehouse automation companies, Vanderlande among them, under regional Toyota Automated Logistics organisations from April 2026. Changes of that scale redraw commercial territories and reporting lines, and in our experience they shake talent loose.

Robotics-led and increasingly confident, with Exotec proving that a French warehouse robotics company can win globally from Lille.

France pairs a strong industrial equipment tradition, led by Manitou in handling and access, with one of Europe's most successful warehouse robotics stories in Exotec. The commercial profile the market needs is shifting accordingly, from equipment territory sales towards robotics and goods-to-person solution selling.

Both anchors are investing at home. Exotec has opened a new global headquarters near Lille, and Manitou has set out a major industrial investment plan across its French sites.

Two foundation-owned world leaders, KNAPP and TGW, are growing, investing and hiring from the same Styrian and Upper Austrian talent pool.

Austria's intralogistics story is remarkable for a country of nine million people. KNAPP and TGW Logistics are both global automation leaders, both foundation-owned, and both expanding. Their proximity creates one of the most concentrated intralogistics talent markets in Europe, and international employers increasingly recruit from it.

New leadership at Swisslog, a new global headquarters on the way, and record results at Kardex. Swiss intralogistics is quietly having a very good cycle.

Switzerland hosts two of the sector's most respected names. Swisslog, the automation and robotics integrator within KUKA, is rebuilding its centre of gravity in Aarau, while Kardex has turned dynamic storage and retrieval into one of the industry's most consistent financial performers. Swiss commercial roles prize precision and long-term account stewardship, and the talent market rewards both.

Home to Toyota Material Handling's European manufacturing heart in Mjolby, and to a deep automation engineering tradition around Gothenburg.

Sweden is where much of Europe's forklift capacity is actually built. Toyota Material Handling's Mjolby site is the company's largest European facility, and the surrounding region has supplied the sector with engineers and commercial people for decades. On the automation side, the Gothenburg area's AGV heritage lives on in businesses like Kollmorgen's NDC operation.

The home of AutoStore, the cube-storage system that changed goods-to-person economics, and of Element Logic, its first and largest partner.

Norway gave the industry one of its defining products. AutoStore's cube storage robotics, run from Nedre Vats with chief executive Mats Hovland Vikse, is deployed worldwide, and Oslo-area integrator Element Logic has grown with it into a European automation force. Norwegian commercial talent is scarce and internationally mobile, and both companies recruit across borders.

Odense has built the world's best-known collaborative robotics cluster, and its technology increasingly runs inside Europe's warehouses.

Denmark's intralogistics relevance runs through robotics. Universal Robots and Mobile Industrial Robots, both grown in Odense, supply the arms and mobile platforms behind a growing share of warehouse automation, and the national cluster body Odense Robotics documents the ecosystem's continued growth in its annual Insight Report. In Aarhus, BEUMER Group's Danish operation carries the Crisplant sortation heritage into global airport and parcel projects.

For commercial talent, Denmark is a robotics products market more than a systems market: the roles in demand are channel, partner and OEM sales, selling through integrator networks across Europe.

Quietly one of Europe's most important intralogistics countries, anchored by TVH in parts and stow Group in racking and automation.

Belgium's contribution is infrastructure. Waregem's TVH is the world's reference supplier of parts for forklifts and industrial vehicles, and stow Group is one of Europe's largest racking manufacturers with a growing automation arm in Movu Robotics. Both are investing in capacity, and both hire commercial people who can operate across borders as naturally as across product lines.

An underrated automation manufacturing base, from Modula's vertical storage in Emilia to E80's plant logistics and System Logistics' warehouse systems.

Italy's intralogistics cluster is concentrated in the north, and Emilia-Romagna in particular: Modula in vertical lift storage, E80 Group in automated plant logistics, System Logistics within the Krones Group in warehouse systems, and Toyota's CESAB truck manufacturing in Bologna. Italian commercial talent tends to be export-minded by necessity, selling Italian-made automation across Europe and beyond.

Mecalux and AR Racking give Spain two of Europe's most international storage businesses, and both are in expansion mode.

Spain's strength is storage and racking at global scale. Mecalux is one of the world's largest storage systems groups with a fast-growing automation line, and AR Racking has built an international project business from the Basque Country. Spanish commercial roles are increasingly international, running export territories from Spain or moving abroad with the expansion.

Europe's logistics build-out is happening in Poland, and automation is now following the warehouses east.

Poland has spent a decade becoming Europe's warehouse floor, and the automation layer is now arriving: the country's first flagship AutoStore projects are live or in build, and KION Group runs a major business services and technology hub in Krakow serving its brands worldwide. Commercial coverage has not kept pace with the opportunity, which makes Poland one of the most interesting hiring markets in this report.

Read the thirteen chapters together and a single conclusion stands out. Europe's intralogistics companies are investing faster than they can hire, and the commercial bench is the bottleneck.

Every market in this report shows the same pattern in different proportions: public capital commitments, structural reorganisation, and growth forecasts that assume commercial teams which do not yet exist. The factories can be built and the robots can be shipped, but a credible automation salesperson takes years to develop, and the pool is shared across all thirteen markets.

For candidates, that means leverage. Sector credibility travels across borders better than most people assume, and the reorganisations under way, at Toyota Industries, at SSI Schaefer, at Swisslog, will create openings at every level. For employers, it means the hiring window matters. The companies that secure commercial talent in 2026 will be selling with a full bench when the forecast growth lands.

Evara works this market every day, across the UK and Europe, on the commercial side only. If this report describes your next hire or your next move, we would be glad to talk.