Fiege Group revealed plans to open a rail-linked mega centre that will mark “the biggest shift from road to rail the UK has ever seen“, with consignmentsranging from white goods to womens fashions, paper and canned fruit. It will open in 2 years time.
Read MoreTwenty UK parliamentarians and RFG members visited Cologne, Frankfurt and Ludwigshafen last month to observe rail freight in action, including post and parcel, intermodal and air services, as well as road, rail and river terminals and BASF’s major operations. We also met DB Cargo, infrastructure provider DB Netz and two independent freight train operators, Connex and Rail4Chem.
We were particularly interested to see how rail freight was operating on the continent, the responses of customers, and the extent to which open access, officially starting in March 2003, had already brought competition for traction, and the effect this was having on customer attitudes.
The recent $2.5 billion bid by Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s state-owned railway, for Stinnes, the country’s top logistics group, was a shot in the arm for Europe’s beleaguered rail freight industry as it struggles to stem a steady loss of traffic to rival transport modes.
The acquisition will triple the volume of Deutsche Bahn’s cargo and logistics traffic, making its freight operations almost as large as its passenger business with around $11 billion in annual revenues.
This is a milestone for Europe’s rail freight which has been an also-ran to the higher profile and more politically sensitive passenger sector.
Deutsche Bahn, the German state-owned railway, launches a $2 billion-plus takeover of freight forwarder Stinnes in a bid to create a new European logistics giant. The purchase of Stinnes, parent of Schenker, one of Europe’s chief integrated logistics providers, from German power utility E.ON will triple Deutsche Bahn’s cargo traffic and add maritime, road and air freight to its core rail operations.
Read MoreRoad carries the most tonnes in the German transportation industry. About 80% of goods are transported by road in German. Rail transports 8% of tonnes.
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