Today the FCC Group signed the contract to buy 100% of the capital of Grupo Logístico Santos (GLS), a move that involves an investment of 128 million euros and creates the foremost Spanish logistics operator in the free market, with an annual turnover of 325 million euros.

The FCC Group has been in the logistics market since 1993 through FCC Versia, one of the group's firms in services, and services is in turn one of FCC's strategic areas, the other two being construction and cement. FCC is currently showing 109 million euros per year in revenues from services, has firms in Spain (Aitena and Logística de Navarra, S.A.) and Portugal (Aitena Portugal, S.A.) and runs logistics and shipping operations primarily in the automobile, pharmaceuticals and technology sectors.

The integration of GLS in the FCC Logistics Group paves the way to the consolidation of one of the leading platforms in logistics in Spain, in a market where the proportion of clients who outsource their logistics (22%) is much lower than the trend on display in more developed markets, such as Britain (37%) and France (33%).

The keynotes of the operation are these:

• Size: The operation has created the number-one group in Spain's free competition market, with a turnover of 325 million euros, 4,000 employees, 650,000 square metres of storage capacity distributed amongst 64 operations centres (dedicated warehouses, buffer warehouses and cross-docking platforms) in Spain and Portugal, and management of a fleet of over 1,700 vehicles.
• Combination of complementary sectors: The new FCC Logistics Group will hold a top-ranking position in the high consumption, home appliance, technology, pharmaceuticals and automobile sectors, with a widely diversified list of clients, thus placing it in an optimum position to take advantage of future opportunities for growth.
• Combination of complementary territories: The union of these two groups will make for better coverage of the Spanish and Portuguese markets, whereas the FCC Logistics Group is already a force to be reckoned with in Portugal (Aitena Portugal).

As a result, the new FCC Logistics Group will be a managing presence throughout the entire chain of supply, expand its coverage and improve its capillary distribution, always in pursuit of facilitating added-value solutions that will provide clients with top-notch service.

The purchase of GLS is part of the process of strengthening the three strategic areas of the FCC Group (services, construction and cement) and is in keeping with the group's objective of becoming the leader in all the sectors it does business in.

With this investment, the FCC Group's service business now accounts for more than 45% of the group's operating results.

The purchase was approved by the FCC Board of Directors on 22 December last, and it is the first major transaction the FCC Group has been involved in since B 1998 S.L., the company that controls FCC, underwent shareholder restructuring.