OREANDA-NEWS. March 22, 2010. At St Petersburg State University’s Graduate School of Management, an opening ceremony was held of the International Logistics and Supply Chain Management Centre established by Russian Railways and Deutsche Bahn. The centre was founded on the basis of a general agreement between DB Schenker, Russian Railways, St Petersburg State University’s Graduate School of Management, the European Business School, and St Petersburg State Railway University.

Taking part in the opening ceremony were Russian Railways President Vladimir Yakunin, Deutsche Bahn CEO Rьdiger Grube, officials from the St Petersburg administration, and Russian and German business representatives.

"The International Logistics Centre should become a unique centre of applied science in terms of its form and content, and will unite the efforts of the largest employers in Russia with an international consortium of universities, to develop global-level educational programmes, in order to prepare management personnel in international and transport logistics to meet the needs of the sector and the country as a whole", Vladimir Yakunin said. One of the most important areas of the centre’s work is to develop advanced training programmes for staff of Russian Railways and Deutsche Bahn AG, taking on board the market needs of both companies.

"In view of the ambitious plans for developing Russian Railways’ logistics business and the scale of its activities, we will in the near future need hundreds of professional management staff in various areas of logistics – the management of terminals, delivery chains, and inventories, the creation of information-logistic systems, and others," Vladimir Yakunin said.

"By entering the logistics market, we are declaring our plans to become not only the largest transport company, but also one of the leading international logistics companies", Russian Railways President added. The Russian Railways president discussed the main strategic areas in which the company’s logistics business is to be developed, noting that the company needs to create a system of modern terminal and logistics complexes throughout the Russian railway network, optimize its existing terminal and storage facilities, and develop its terminal operations business, as well as create a logistics company within the Russian Railways holding, which will integrate the services of structural subdivisions and subsidiaries of Russian Railways, along with external suppliers, in overall delivery chain management services.

"A range of high-priority projects to create terminal and logistics infrastructure are now already progressing to the practical stage. The most important of these is the project to create a terminal and logistics centre at Bely Rast in the Moscow Region; our strategic partner Deutsche Bahn AG is directly involved in its development", Mr Yakunin said.

The planned logistics centre will cover a territory of more than 100 hectares, and will include a container terminal with capacity of 290,000 TEU per year, a universal terminal for processing cargo for industrial uses, a universal warehouse complex, a centre for customs clearing of cargo, and also an administrative-business centre. Other examples of high-potential infrastructure projects currently being developed are the creation of a dry port in the Leningrad Region, near Shushary station, and also the construction of the Doskino logistics centre in the Nizhny Novgorod Region; these will become important strategic facilities of the regional industrial and logistics infrastructure.