At its meeting today, the supervisory board of the Bremen warehouse company ?a corporation from 1877 ?mutually approved two new commitments for the BLG LOGISTICS GROUP. Both involvements are of major strategic importance and open up new business areas, giving BLG LOGISTICS access to car transport by rail and the car terminal business in Russia.

With a 50 percent holding in CTL Car Transport Logistics in Mainz, currently owned by Gerald Binz, BLG will secure capacities in the presently very conservative vehicle market, and develop car transport by rail. The existing co-operation with the German Rail subsidiary ATG is not affected by this. The new joint venture will initially order the first 225 out of a total 1,264 special vehicles from the French manufacturer ABFRA (Ateliers Bretons de Re醠isations Ferroviaires Industries S. A.) for some 30 million Euros under the name of BLG Autorail GmbH. Delivery of the first trains is anticipated for September this year. BLG Autorail wants to expand the fleet to 75 car block trains by the end of 2014.

In the second joint venture decided on by the supervisory board, BLG LOGISTICS finally gains access to the Russian market. As part of the Eastern strategy, the joint enterprise will develop a car terminal in St. Petersburg together with the Russian partner OOO RoL Trans SPB (RoL). St. Petersburg is the only port at which the private operator JSC Sea Port of St. Petersburg can provide suitable space for the development of a car terminal on short notice. A terminal of 45,000 square metres is initially planned, which can be expanded to 100,000 square metres as business grows. The mid-term turnover volume in St. Petersburg should initially be increased from 60,000 to some 180,000 vehicles per year. The investments in the terminal抯 suprastructure will be around seven million Euros.