Porterbrook, the rolling stock asset management company, has received Five Stars from Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB) for the second year running, coming first out of six participating Transport and Rail companies in Europe, and placed 17th globally out of 406 participants.
GRESB is an internationally recognised global benchmarking survey which assesses and compares the environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance of real estate and infrastructure organisations annually. Porterbrook has been participating in the GRESB survey for five years, and this year achieved its highest ever overall score (93 out of 100).
In GRESB’s 2020 assessment, Porterbrook scored highly for Leadership and Policies within the Management component, reflecting the strong governance practices across the Group. Within the Performance component, Porterbrook was recognised for its achievements across Energy, Emissions, Waste and Health & Safety.
In recent years, Porterbrook has been investing significantly in zero and low emission solutions for Britain’s railways, including over £1 million to deliver HydroFLEX, the first train in the world to be retrofitted with hydrogen power. The project was delivered in collaboration with the University of Birmingham, and in September 2020 HydroFLEX became the first hydrogen powered train to run on the UK mainline.
Mary Grant, CEO of Porterbrook said: “We are incredibly proud that our achievements and progress across all three pillars of ESG have been recognised by the rigorous GRESB benchmark this year.
“All our stakeholders place a high value on sustainability, from our customers and industry partners to our investors and the travelling public. It is essential that they can track our performance in this way. Porterbrook will continue to put ESG at the heart of all our activities as the UK rail industry goes through significant change”
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Media Contacts
Porterbrook Leasing
Rupert Brennan Brown, Director of Stakeholder Engagement
Rupert@porterbrook.co.uk or +44 (0)7973 950 923
Financial or corporate PR enquiries can also be directed to:
Maitland/AMO
James Isola, Partner
James McFarlane, Partner
jmcfarlane@maitland.co.uk or +44 (0)20 7379 5151
About Porterbrook
- Porterbrook has been at the heart of the UK rail network for over 25 years and currently owns almost a third of the national passenger rail fleet
- The company currently has almost 4,500 vehicles on lease or on order. Since privatisation, it has invested £3bn in 2,500 new passenger and freight vehicles, and is aiming to invest over £1bn in UK rail over the coming years
- Porterbrook works with a significant number of UK companies across the rail supply chain, investing £3 million per week and supporting around 7,000 UK jobs
- The company is also spending tens of millions of pounds in a significant upgrade of its fleets to reduce carbon emissions and improve air quality over the coming years
- Porterbrook employs over 150 people of which three quarters are engineers and project managers. In addition, over a third of the company’s workforce is female including a number of our executive team which compares favourably to the UK rail industry average of 16% (source: Women In Rail)
- In October 2014, the Porterbrook Group of companies was acquired by a consortium of investors including Alberta Investment Management Corporation (“AIMCo”), Allianz Capital Partners (“ACP”) on behalf of certain insurance companies of the Allianz Group, EDF Invest and a consortium of Utilities Trust of Australia (“UTA”), The Infrastructure Fund (“TIF”) and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Pension Fund (“RBS”)
