Dear Sir or Madam,
The title and motto of this year’s annual report is “Delivering.” Pure and simple. Delivering is what we do on a daily basis. We move goods, raw materials and products of all kinds. From the smallest screws for global automotive production to core components of the Ariane 6, which will one day fly into space. We deliver. Every day. Performance, expertise and passion.
Once again in 2023, this wasn’t always easy. The state of crisis in the world dominated the headlines in the reporting year. As logistics experts, we are directly affected by every shift in the economic or geopolitical landscape, every ripple, however small. The shortage of skilled labor, energy prices, climate change, inflation, the situation in the Middle East, attacks by Houthi rebels on merchant ships – the list of wars, crises and challenges is long and ever-changing. For logistics providers, this means having to deal with interdependencies that could already change again tomorrow. All this made for a challenging business environment in 2023. Given these complex challenges, we can be very satisfied with the strong operating performance and stable financial result of the BLG Group in the past financial year.
We delivered.
BLG LOGISTICS closed the 2023 financial year considerably better than anticipated. Combined Group revenue increased by EUR 91,055 thousand year on year to EUR 1,210,035 thousand, which was a respectable achievement given the large number of crises and challenges. All divisions and business areas and all colleagues contributed to this result. Reliability and adaptability were crucial to our ability to survive through these difficult times. By investing in new technologies, optimizing processes and further developing our services portfolio, we were able to enhance our competitiveness and strengthen our relationships with our customers.
In 2023, BLG LOGISTICS handled, transported, or technically processed around 5 million vehicles across its entire AUTOMOBILE network. BLG AutoTerminal Bremerhaven is on its way to positioning itself as a European hub for automobile transports between Asia and Europe. In the reporting year, for example, COSCO ran a first test shipment with a view to expanding its service to Europe.
In the CONTAINER Division, we had to absorb the loss of extra revenues from the coronavirus years considerably faster than planned in the 2023 reporting period. In addition, handling volumes in the CONTAINER Division continued their downward trend amid the muted economic outlook. Implementation of the ongoing transformation process continued apace. The positive effects this had on earnings contributed decisively to the fact that despite the decline in line with expectations, the CONTAINER Division posted a year-end result still in clearly positive territory.
In May 2023, we officially inaugurated our new C3 Bremen logistics center in the presence of the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, Dr. Robert Habeck. Our lighthouse project has in the meantime garnered several awards and is becoming a blueprint for sustainable logistics real estate. At the same time, it is an example of how we are finding new ways and solutions to not only give consideration to environmental concerns and the needs of our employees in our business activities, but to make them a priority. This is precisely the approach we are taking when we say: We want to play a role in shaping the sustainable logistics of tomorrow.
We are aware of the fact that a complex business model like ours cannot be changed overnight; however, we firmly believe that with shared convictions and drive progress can be made. This is also reflected in our new sustainability targets that we defined in the reporting year. The ten quantitative targets make progress in our key areas of action measurable and controllable at an operational level and serve as a guide for forward-looking and ambitious sustainability management.
Our Mission Climate initiative continues to play an important role in this context, especially given that decarbonization represents both a major challenge and a major lever for the entire logistics industry. However, despite all our best efforts and willingness to invest, we are also dependent on policy-makers creating the right framework conditions. In the reporting year, a lack of funding for example meant that we unfortunately had to shelve a planned project to electrify heavy goods vehicles for the time being. Nevertheless, we continued to make good progress overall and exceeded the target for reducing our CO2e emissions set for the reporting period by a considerable margin. Our decision to set an even more ambitious climate protection target from 2025 once again underscores how seriously we take our responsibility in this area.
With our CONTRACT and AUTOMOBILE roadmaps, we have adopted the right strategy at the right time. In the CONTRACT Division, we made significant progress in 2023 thanks to the consistent implementation of the CONTRACT roadmap initiated in 2022. In 2023, we launched the AUTOMOBILE roadmap to enable us to similarly leverage synergies in this division and make it fit for the future. The first steps have already been taken.
The 2023 result is a testament to our consistency, our focus on solutions and our entrepreneurial courage in a dynamic and challenging business environment. However, we know that the economic and political uncertainties are likely to continue or even grow – and are preparing for this very intensively. Ensuring that we can continue to deliver in the future is a challenge we all face together. Our employees are the lifeblood of our company and impressively demonstrate day after day that if we support each other as partners there is no limit to what we can achieve.
Frank Dreeke
Chairman of the Board of Management (CEO)
Michael Blach
CONTAINER Division
Christine Hein
Finances (CFO)
Matthias Magnor
AUTOMOBILE & CONTRACT Divisions (COO)
Ulrike Riedel
Labor Relations Director (CHRO)