New office building for Tognum

• Tognum Group brings corporate and service functions together under one roof
• Prisma Group to construct new building for 400 staff members
• To be ready by the second quarter of 2010

Friedrichshafen, 13 February 2009. A new building for Tognum’s staff and management will help the Group to operate more economically. A new office building for more than 400 staff members at Tognum’s domicile in Friedrichshafen is scheduled to be ready for use in the second quarter of 2010. The building will be leased from the Prisma Group and will be built on land to be sold to Prisma by Tognum. Office buildings currently rented at some distance from the two plants will no longer be required after the new building goes into operation.

Because of the strong growth in revenues and production volumes in recent years, many new employees have been recruited at our headquarters in Friedrichshafen, particularly in the areas of research and development, sales and information technology. As a result of this expansion, workspace for approximately 400 office staff has had to be used outside the two plants, which was not ideal in terms of operating efficiency, but unavoidable.

This will change when the future building opposite Plant 1 is ready for use in the second quarter of 2010. Tognum’s main corporate and service functions will be located in the new building. It will have six floors and 8,700 square meters of floor space to accommodate more than 400 employees, as well as parking space for 120 cars underground and another 50 above ground, and parking space for 100 bicycles. The building will also have a staff restaurant, seminar rooms and meeting rooms. Long, time consuming walks or drives between today’s various office locations, some of which are quite far apart, will thus be eliminated.

For this purpose, the Tognum Group will sell a 5,000-square-meter piece of land on Maybachstraße opposite Plant 1, currently being used as a parking lot, to the German subsidiary of the Prisma Group, which is domiciled in Lustenau, Austria and is specialized in office buildings and business parks. Prisma will take the role of investor and will construct a 20-meter-high building with two wings arranged in an L shape. Tognum has agreed on a long-term lease with Prisma. “This is an ideal solution for Tognum. On the one hand, it will allow us to concentrate our important tasks and functions in one place. On the other hand, we will be able to use capital reserved for investment solely to expand our production plants. This means that we will invest in growing our business operations and not in office buildings,“ stated Tognum CEO Volker Heuer.

Work will probably start on the site in March 2009. Following a construction period of approximately 15 months, the building is expected to be completed in the early summer of the year 2010.