Echo Investment has signed a lease with PKP CARGO concerning an area of 8,000 sqm in an office building which has been constructed as part of the second stage of A4 Business Park in Katowice. It is one of the largest transactions in Poland as regards the regional office property market. The current seats of the company’s plant and its headquarters in Katowice are to be moved to A4. The company is to move into the new building in September. The consolidation of Katowice branches of PKP CARGO was carried out with the support of the international consultancy firm Savills.

PKP CARGO currently occupies two buildings in Katowice – its own office building on św. Huberta Street and a leased office building on Wojciecha Korfantego Avenue. Moving the two seats into one location is aimed at improving the functioning of the Katowice offices of PKP CARGO and improving the comfort of the company"s staff. It fits in with the general trend of concentrating seats, which can be observed in large corporations. At the same time the office building on św. Huberta Street in Katowice which belongs to PKP CARGO will be put up for sale. “Having analysed the status of PKP CARGO"S properties we decided to give up on two separate seats and we focused on one office for our plant and our Katowice headquarters. It is the best solution. Combining seats is a trend which can be observed in large enterprises. It makes it possible to manage office space more effectively and optimise costs,” says Łukasz Hadyś, CFO of PKP CARGO. “The new seat is a technologically advanced building which fits in well with our needs. The solutions applied will improve the quality of work of the people employed in the Katowice offices of PKP CARGO,” adds Artur Kostowski, director of Real Estate Office at PKP CARGO. “We are proud of the fact that PKP CARGO chose the second stage of A4 Business Park for its seat. In June this year PKP CARGO will confirm the option concerning 1,500 sqm in the same building. Then the second stage of A4 Business Park will be fully leased. All this confirms the top global standards of projects carried out by Echo Investment as well as optimal working conditions offered by us to tenants,” says Joanna Nicińska, senior leasing manager from Echo Investment"s Office and Hotel Department. “The contract concluded by PKP CARGO and Echo Investment is one of the largest office space leasing transactions in Katowice over the last few years. The company has leased more than 82 pct of the office space available in building B in A4 Business Park. I am glad that we were able to advise PKP CARGO in this complicated and time-consuming process of choosing its new location. I believe that the new seat will work well as the seat of the control centre of PKP CARGO thanks to convenient transport connections and its advanced technical infrastructure. Furthermore, the effective layout of the area on the upper floors made it possible to arrange it flexibly in order to adjust it to the needs of various groups of employees and company"s functions, including the freight train traffic control office in Poland,” says Tomasz Subocz, associate director, head of the Tenant Representation Department at Savills in Poland. A4 Business Park is being developed on Francuska Street in Katowice, near an exit from the A4 motorway. The facility is surrounded by a well developed network of public transport – there are numerous bus stops nearby as well as a railway station A4 Business Park consists of three buildings. The construction of the first one as well as a multi-storey car park offering 560 spaces was finished in Q1 2014. The seven-storey building (9,000 sqm) was fully leased by the IBM concern. The second stage of the project involves the construction of a 10-storey building with an office area of app. 9,000 sqm. The design of A4 Business Park was created by a well-known Kraków-based architectural studio DDJM. In January this year both buildings obtained BREEAM certificates at the "very good" level. The first stage of A4 Business Park, which was put into operation last year, had a score of 66.2 pct. The second office building which is part of the project had an equally as high score of 66.4 pct. The PKP CARGO group is the leader of railway transport of goods in Poland and the second largest operator in the European Union. It was established in 2001. As far as logistic services are concerned it uses land transport (railway and car) as well as sea transport (ferries). It has the largest fleet of rail freight rolling stock in Poland. The carrier starts the average of a thousand trains every day and it services several thousand customers. It renders independent goods freight in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Holland, Hungary and Lithuania. The PKP CARGO group includes subsidiaries such as: Cargosped (which is responsible for intermodal freight), PS Trade Trans (national and international railway forwarding) and PKP CARGOTABOR (one of the largest rolling stock companies in the world). In 2013 the PKP CARGO group had revenue of PLN 4.8 bln and a net profit of PLN 65 mln and it carried a load of 114 mln tonnes. On the 30th of October 2013 PKP CARGO made its debut on the Warsaw Stock Exchange and it became the first rail freight carrier in the European Union to be quoted on a stock exchange. The value of the public offer, in which PKP S.A. sold nearly 50 pct of PKP CARGO"s shares, amounted to PLN 1.42 bln. The company is currently part of the mWIG40 index. PKP S.A. is still its main shareholder. The PKP CARGO group operates actively in terms of CRS. It uses responsible staff policy standards, implements a number of activities aimed at environmental protection and it is a patron of monuments of railway technique gathered in the Wolsztyn's Steam Locomotive Shed, which is unique on the European scale. Savills is a global company which renders real estate trading services, it is quoted on the London Stock Exchange. It has an international chain of over 600 offices and agencies in North and South America, Great Britain, Europe, Africa, Asia and Pacific and in the Middle East. It offers a broad range of specialist consulting, management and transaction services to clients all over the world.