Materiality Analysis

This Sustainability Report is a central part of our overall business reporting and was prepared in accordance with the GRI standards (Core option). We make the associated GRI Content Index available online. reporting.blg-logistics.com/en

Also as part of Group reporting, we have published a non-financial statement in accordance with the EU Corporate Social Responsibility Directive for the past several years and have integrated a non-financial Group report (NFR) into our sustainability reporting. The corresponding CSR Index shows where the topics relevant for the NFR appear in the various sections of the present report.

Boundaries and reporting scope

Our sustainability reporting covers the fully consolidated companies of the BLG LOGISTICS GROUP, which belong exclusively to the AUTOMOBILE and CONTRACT Divisions. Therefore, when identifying and selecting material topics to be dealt with and further prioritizing the contents for the non-financial statement, we focused above all on these two divisions and our central departments.

This report concentrates on the domestic BLG companies. They account for 91.2 percent of all employees and 96.8 percent of revenue of the fully consolidated locations, i.e. the most substantial part of our business activities. At the same time, in the interests of greater transparency, we are working continuously on increasing the availability of data from our foreign companies. We already include the consumption of the relevant foreign locations in our energy and greenhouse gas accounting.

The third CONTAINER Division is represented by the EUROGATE Group, in which BLG LOGISTICS holds a 50 percent stake. EUROGATE is Europe’s leading s hipping line-independent container terminal group. EUROGATE manages the areas that are material for non-financial reporting independently, including energy, the environment, personnel and compliance. We therefore present the NFR-relevant topics for the CONTAINER Division separately.

Identifying and selecting the reported aspects

The present publication continues to take its cues from our report for the 2018 financial year in which we described in detail the process we applied to determine the contents of our reporting. To ensure that the topics continue to be up-to-date and relevant, we conducted an internal materiality review process in the fall of 2021. In a workshop format, the members of our Sustainability Board discussed all aspects and reassessed them against the background of developments that have since taken place at both sociopolitical and business level. One change is the new inclusion of the topic “Resources & Waste”, which adds a third aspect to the ENVIRONMENTAL pillar and on which we are reporting for the first time this year. We want to assume even greater responsibility for the environmentally compatible use of resources in the future and aim to reduce our waste volume by avoiding, reducing, recycling and reusing waste. In all other areas, there have only been slight shifts in the importance and weighting of the topics – more on this in the following section. Apart from this, we have continued to report on the key figures collected to date beyond 2021 in line with the GRI requirements.

Weighting of our material topics

We have grouped our material topics under the three headings ENVIRONMENTAL, SOCIAL and ECONOMIC and arranged them in the materiality matrix according to their importance for BLG and their impacts on society. In addition, we have indicated the SDGs that are associated with the respective topic. The topic Sustainable Supply Chain relates to aspects from all three pillars, which is why we provide separate information on our strategies, progress and challenges in this context.

In addition to ongoing feedback from our stakeholders, the reevaluation of individual topics in particular also drew on the results of the internal materiality process described above. The aspects of climate protection, energy management, compliance and sustainable supply chain were unanimously assigned increased importance. To enable us to focus even more strongly than before on the most relevant fields, we have also divided the matrix into three new areas – in which we have included the topics that are ranked as important, very important and highest priority for BLG LOGISTICS. Only the latter are included in our NFR. The slightly changed result and the new presentation are shown in the adjacent materiality matrix.

For each material topic in this report, we explain our management approach and we also present selected key performance indicators in accordance with the GRI guidelines. In addition, we describe how BLG LOGISTICS addresses the aspects of the NFR – including concepts, results, control mechanisms and relevant KPIs. You can find an assessment of overall risks in the Risk Management section.

Materiality matrix