Abellio (company)

Abellio GmbH
legal form	GmbH
founding	2004
Seat	Berlin , Germany
management	Michiel Noy (Chief Executive Officer) Dirk Snel Roman Müller
Branch	traffic
Website	www.abellio.de
Status: August 2019

The Abellio GmbH is a transport company with headquarters in Berlin and a subsidiary of Abellio Transport Holding of Utrecht , in turn, the activities of the Dutch State Railways Nederlandse Spoorwegen coordinated passenger outside the Netherlands.

In Germany Abellio is a private provider of local rail passenger transport (SPNV). The company is present in a total of nine federal states. Operations are carried out by the subsidiary Abellio Rail NRW in Hagen, Abellio Rail Mitteldeutschland in Halle (Saale), Abellio Rail Baden-Württemberg in Stuttgart and WestfalenBahn in Bielefeld. Abellio is also active in the cleaning and security industry through PTS.

Abellio is a member of the Mofair interest group and since January 1, 2020 also (again) of the Association of German Transport Companies .

History and developments

Logo 2004-2009

The company was founded in 2004 as a joint subsidiary of the municipal Essener Versorgungs- und Verkehrsgesellschaft mbH (EVV), to which the Essener Verkehrs-AG (EVAG) also belongs, and the Essen bus operator Mesenhohl. The predecessor was EVAG-Betriebsgesellschaft mbH (EVBG), founded in 2001, into which the EVAG driving and workshop operations were spun off. Abellio was founded in order to be able to enter the nationwide competition for transport services. Therefore, the EVAG operation was not part of the Abellio company, but was organized in the EVV subsidiary meoline GmbH. The previous EVAG managing director, Wolfgang Meyer, became the managing director of the new company.

Abellio subsequently won several tenders for rail transport in North Rhine-Westphalia and was also active in bus transport through a number of bus companies acquired in Hesse, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt. In 2005, 75.1% of the company was sold to the British investor group Star Capital Partners . EVV continued to hold 12.36%. The Abellio management held further shares.

As the main workshop, Abellio reactivated a former Bundesbahn plant at the Hagen - Eckesey location . A total of eight million euros were initially invested here to house the vehicles and to carry out maintenance and repair work.

The first start of operation took place in December 2005 in the Emscher-Ruhrtal network on today's Glückauf-Bahn, then Nokia-Bahn . Since then, Alstom Coradia LINT multiple units , which are owned by the company, have been in use here. This line had been put out to tender by the Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Ruhr (VRR) for twelve years. At the same time, operations on the Ruhr-Lenne Railway between Essen and Hagen began. Here the original contract duration was initially only two years, so that Abellio has refrained from investing in new vehicles. Instead, old n-cars and express train compartment cars were used, some of which had been rented from all over Germany.

There were also three control cars of the type ABybdzf ^482.1 with a Wittenberger head, which were built from ^intermediate cars of the DR type Bmh ⁷²¹ in the former RAW Halberstadt in the mid-1990s . These are cars 50 80 80-35 632, 639 and 665 Bybdzf ⁴⁸² . They could be acquired cheaply from DB AG and were retrofitted with a 1st class area. While car 50 00 80-35 632 is today on a museum track in the Abellio base in Hagen-Eckesey, the other two cars were sold to Cargo Logistik Rail Service GmbH. This temporarily leased the 55 80 80-35 665 D-CLR to the operator of the Hamburg-Cologne Express.

Push and pull locomotives were rented vehicles of the Siemens ES64U2 type . The owner was today's company MRCE , which at that time was still active under the name Dispolok and was owned by Siemens AG .

As part of the new tender for the Ruhr-Sieg network for twelve years, from December 2007 to December 2019, the Ruhr-Lenne-Bahn was also awarded again. Abellio has repeatedly won the line and has commissioned the leasing company CB-Rail (now Ascendos ) with the acquisition of a total of twenty Stadler FLIRT multiple units . For the first time, the two-part version was used, which until then only existed on paper.

With the start of operations in the Ruhr-Sieg network, the n-wagons between Hagen, Siegen and Essen were replaced. New to the operating concept is the regular winging of trains coming from Hagen in Iserlohn-Letmathe : There one part always goes to Iserlohn, the other always to Siegen. As a result, the transport authority NWL was able to reduce the number of train kilometers without, however, deteriorating the overall offer.

In 2005, the company also participated in the founding of the Westfalenbahn and entered the market in the north-west of Germany. As one of four equal partners, Westfalenbahn has also been operating in northern North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony since 2007. Stadler FLIRT, which is owned by Alpha Trains , were also used here. In July 2017 Abellio announced that it would be the sole shareholder of the WestfalenBahn . The previous shareholders ( moBiel GmbH , Mindener Kreisbahnen GmbH and Verkehrsbetriebe Extertal GmbH) transferred their respective shares in WestfalenBahn in full to Abellio GmbH.

In November 2008 it was announced that the previous owners of Abellio GmbH were leaving the company and selling all of the company's shares to the Dutch state railway. On November 7, 2008, the takeover was registered with the Federal Cartel Office for approval, which was granted unconditionally on November 24, 2008. In the further course Abellio became the central brand name of all activities of the Dutch state railway in the passenger traffic outside the Netherlands. Managing Director Meyer left the company at the end of 2008.

LINT from Abellio at the stop at Ronsdorf train station

Effective January 1, 2009, Shaun Mills became Managing Director of Abellio GmbH. Under his leadership, the company took part in the award of the then RB 47 ( Der Müngstener ) line in 2009 and was able to further expand the network with effect from December 2013. From 2007 , a new investment model based on the sale-lease-back principle was used for the first time , also based on the experience of the financial crisis . Abellio acquired the Coradia LINT vehicles and immediately after delivery sold them to the Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Ruhr (VRR), which then rented the vehicles to Abellio. This construct makes the VRR the borrower of the banks. The aim of the agency was to make its own creditworthiness available to all actors equally. The final bid was awarded in November 2010.

In 2009, an out-of-court settlement was reached in a long-standing dispute between VRR and DB Regio NRW. This would have provided for a long-term direct award in favor of Deutsche Bahn. At that time, Abellio took legal action against these plans. Both the Münster Public Procurement Chamber and the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court declared the award to be illegal. Since there was a different decision by the Higher Regional Court of Brandenburg from the year , the case was submitted to the Federal Court of Justice . On February 8, 2011, the Federal Court of Justice ruled on this matter. The ruling states that transport services in local rail passenger transport must henceforth be tendered throughout Europe and that procurement law must be strictly adhered to. Direct awarding of contracts is therefore prevented in the future and the orders, some of which cost billions, may no longer be given informally to a company selected by the responsible body.

Talent 2 from Abellio Rail Central Germany

In 2012, Abellio was awarded the contract to operate the Saale-Thuringia-Südharz network, whereupon Abellio Rail Mitteldeutschland GmbH, based in Halle , was founded. Abellio built a new workshop in Sangerhausen . In the STS network, 35 E-Talent 2s from Bombardier have been in use since December 2015 (three and five-part models). In December 2018 Abellio Rail Mitteldeutschland took over the operation of the Saxony-Anhalt diesel network. Alstom Coradia LINT locomotives are used in the 16-line network .

The Rhein-Ruhr-Express with Abellio NRW as operator on some routes

Abellio also continued to expand in NRW: In 2013 Abellio Rail NRW was awarded the contract to operate the Niederrhein network including cross-border traffic to Arnhem (Netherlands) from December 2016. Since December 2018, Abellio Rail NRW has been using line RE 11 (RRX) of the Rhein-Ruhr-Express . Line RE 1 (RRX) will follow in June 2020. In December 2019 Abellio will start operating the Rhine-Ruhr S-Bahn.

In Baden-Württemberg , Abellio has been operating on the Stuttgart network / Neckar valley since mid-2019. Abellio built a new depot in Pforzheim to maintain the 52 Talent 2 locomotives from the manufacturer Bombardier, which are used in the Neckartal network.

In May 2015 Abellio relocated its German headquarters from Essen to Berlin. The company cited the nationwide orientation and proximity to political bodies and industry associations as well as representatives of the federal states as the reason for the move . At the same time, the Hagen location was expanded, which was expanded into a representative office in North Rhine-Westphalia .

Corporate structure

Subsidiaries and Services

The structure of the group in Germany is divided into the Rail and Service divisions.

Abellio Rail

• Abellio Rail NRW
• Abellio Rail Central Germany
• Abellio Rail Baden-Württemberg
• WestfalenBahn

Abellio service

• PTS

Changes / concentration on local rail transport

Bus of the transport company Werner, which until 2013 belonged to Abellio Bus GmbH, in the Worms bus station

In 2006, the two holding companies Abellio Bus GmbH for bus transport and Abellio Rail GmbH for rail transport were founded in order to organize the various holdings according to divisions. From 2010, Abellio began to reduce its stakes in the bus sector. In 2010 the Mesenhohl family took over Abellio's 49% stake in Meobus, Essen. The remaining 51% of this company was also previously held by her.

In April 2011, the 34% stake in OBS Omnibusbetrieb Saalekreis was transferred to the two other shareholders, Vetter and HAVAG .

With effect from January 1, 2013, CVAG took over all shares in ETP Euro Traffic Partner, which were previously held by Abellio, CVAG and two regional bus companies in Saxony to an extent of 25% each.

In April 2013 Abellio announced that it wanted to realign itself strategically: According to this, Abellio wanted to concentrate exclusively on local rail passenger transport in the future. The group was therefore looking for a buyer for its three remaining bus companies, KVG, VM and Werner. On November 1, 2013, the Swiss financial investor Transport Capital took over the bus companies VM and Werner . The remaining KVG was sold to Rhenus Veniro in October 2014 .

Abellio Rail was merged with Abellio GmbH in mid-June 2014.

Abellio Rail Südwest emerged at the end of August 2014 from NedBahnen Deutschland, which was founded in Frankfurt on May 2, 2003 and has been based in Essen since mid-2010. On April 22, 2015, it moved its headquarters to Berlin, won the tender for lot 1 of the Stuttgarter Netze , and on September 26, 2016 moved its headquarters to Stuttgart and renamed itself Abellio Rail Baden-Württemberg.

Web links

Commons : Abellio (transport company)  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Abellio group

See also

• List of German railway companies

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Stefan Hennigfeld: Abellio returns to the VDV. Zughalt.de, February 3, 2020
2. ^ Markus Weisbrod, Michael Dittrich: www.reisezug-wagen.de - The ONLINE wagon database on the Internet. Retrieved March 22, 2018 . 
3. ^ The Wittenberg control car from Abellio Rail NRW is preserved on a museum track in front of the company premises in Hagen. In: bahnbilder.de. Retrieved March 22, 2018 . 
4. ^ Helmut Bückle: Cargo Logistik Rail Service GmbH (CLR). Retrieved March 22, 2018 . 
5. ↑ NedRailways wants to take over Abellio. (No longer available online.) In: www.eurailpress.de. November 14, 2008, archived from the original on December 24, 2015 ; accessed on December 24, 2015 . 
6. ^ Federal Court of Justice, judgment of February 8, 2011, file number X ZB 4/10
7. ↑ Dennis Lotzmann: Abellio before the start on the Harz rail network. In: Volksstimme Magdeburg. Retrieved July 17, 2019 . 
8. ↑ Abellio builds a new depot in Pforzheim. Abellio Germany, accessed July 17, 2019 . 
9. ↑ Abellio Germany moves to Berlin . September 18, 2014. Accessed December 24, 2015.
10. ↑ structure. Abellio Germany, accessed February 28, 2019 . 
11. ↑ http://www.busfacts.de/oepnv-wettbewerb/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=123:abellio-gruendet-beteiligungsverbindungen&catid=8:unternehmensnachrichten-archiv&Itemid=27 (link not available)
12. ↑ Report in the public transport competition portal ( Memento from January 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
13. ↑ http://www.busfacts.de/oepnv-wettbewerb/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3483:handelsregister-und-unternehmensnachrichten-januar-2012&catid=8:unternehmensnachrichten-archiv&Itemid=27 (link not available)
14. ↑ Directional lamp, CVAG employee newspaper, Volume 58, No. 4 (August 2013), p. 8 ( Memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
15. ↑ Press release on abellio.de: Abellio Germany before strategic realignment. (No longer available online.) Abellio Germany, April 10, 2013, archived from the original on July 10, 2013 ; Retrieved April 25, 2013 . 
16. ↑ Announcement of the Red Renner: VM / WERNER: Sale in Switzerland. Roter Renner, November 2, 2013, accessed November 2, 2013 . 
17. ↑ Sale of Kraftverkehrsgesellschaft Dreiländereck to Rhenus Veniro completed. (No longer available online.) January 2, 2015, archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; accessed on February 17, 2015 (press release at www.rhenus-veniro.de).