In 1999, Robert Dobrzycki was a fifth-year student at the University of Warsaw, Faculty of Management, when he quite accidentally found a job as a junior accountant and financial analyst at Menard Doswell, a US developer with Polish capital that employed 15 people and was building a few warehouses per year. Six years later, he was CEO and seeking more challenges.
In 2005, he met Carl Panattoni, founder of Panattoni Development Company Inc., now one of the biggest private industrial developers in the world, who was visiting Warsaw for just a few days on a business trip. They talked about Robert’s business vision. At their third meeting, Mr. Panattoni said, “Let’s make business together,” took $5 million out of his pocket for the first projects, and got on a plane back to the US. Robert was 29, quit Menard Doswell, and moved into an empty office. Their new company was named Panattoni Europe.
Robert bought computers and printers, hired an assistant, three managers, and IT people, and started from scratch. Three months later, he made his first development transaction for the cosmetics company Coty in Bielsko-Biała. After three more months, he achieved a spectacular success with a 52,000 m² warehouse development for H&M worth €25 million, a significant amount at that time. For a very young company lacking large-scale backup and know-how, this exploit was risky but lucky. It turned out to be the biggest development transaction in the Central-Eastern European market. From that moment, Panattoni Europe started to grow.
After a three-year property boom, the company employed 120 people handling about a dozen projects per year totaling approximately 150,000 m², which was impressive compared to 10,000 m² at Menard Doswell. In 2008, the market crashed following the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. Paradoxically, this was quite helpful for Panattoni in Poland, as it managed to reduce its transaction volumes by half and stabilize its market share, while its global competitors stopped completely. Despite the financial flow crisis, the business was soon restored, and two years later, the company became the Polish market leader.
2011 and 2012 were years of great acceleration and international expansion. Starting the business in Poland enabled Panattoni to create a critical mass that would be difficult to achieve quickly elsewhere. Its first foreign targets were Czechia and Germany, followed by the majority of significant European markets. The business grew so fast that, at some point, a new office was opened in a new country every few months. The breakthrough partner was Amazon, which began cooperating with Panattoni about a decade ago and generated an unprecedented boost during the e-commerce boom caused by the 2020 COVID lockdown. During this period, Amazon dynamically expanded its infrastructure by creating a network of facilities on an enormous scale, from 100,000 to 200,000 m² and €100 million to €200 million. Now, this is Panattoni’s biggest European client, opening some markets and attracting other large-volume clients.
Panattoni currently runs 53 offices in the US and Europe, with a portfolio of over 54 million m² for over 2,500 clients. Panattoni Europe is the biggest industrial developer on the Old Continent, with annual sales of almost €6 billion—a position unreachable by competitors that are two or three times smaller. It employs 1,100 people and operates in 15 countries: the UK, Czechia, Austria, Luxembourg, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Poland, Hungary, France, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal, and Belgium. Its key clients include Amazon, DB Schenker, DHL, FedEx, DPD, XPO, Coca-Cola, Weber, Whirlpool, Bosch, Volkswagen, H&M, and InPost. The key to such spectacular success is the company’s business model of remaining private, with no institutional capital, ensuring independence, flexibility, and speed. This is unique in a market divided between big institutional players and a large number of small local firms. Currently, Robert Dobrzycki holds a 34% share.
Interestingly, the Panattoni brand is not as well known in the US as it is on the Old Continent. It is predominantly considered European, thanks to the success achieved in Europe by Robert. Panattoni is also one of the biggest global players with such a high share of Polish capital, even though Poland now generates 20% of its European business. Although e-commerce has recently slowed down, the markets are stimulated by a new factor: nearshoring, or the shortening of supply chains. Apart from that, traditional trade, production, and other industries continue to need warehouses. Thus, Robert plans further expansion to Asia, starting with India, where the potential is enormous, and offices have been opened in Bangalore, Delhi, and Bombay. He is also interested in Japan, Australia, and the Middle East.
It is not surprising that, in the last decade, Robert has been awarded by various business organizations as the Man of the Year, the Personality of the Year, the CEO of the Year, and the Man of the Decade.
