Polish rail transport provider PKP Cargo has launched a new service on behalf of German finished vehicle provider Mosolf bringing Fiat vehicles from the carmaker’s production site in Tychy, Poland, cross-border to the logistics hub at Elstal/Wustermark (near Berlin) in Germany.
The service will move around 300 vehicles on six block trains a week, adding up to around 7,200 vehicles moved a month to the hub at Elstal Wustermark. Two of the six weekly trains will head to the nearby Mosolf Technical and Logistics Centre in Ketzin for onward truck delivery in Germany. The remaining four will transport vehicles a further 1,100km onto the Grimaldi Europa Terminal in Antwerp, Belgium for transhipment to wider Europe.
Daniel Ryczek, Member of the Board for International Affairs, PKP Cargo outlined that the new service set new standards and underlined the company’s plans to develop internationally, beginning with activity on one of the largest railway markets in Europe.
“Foreign competitors with their own railway companies have been operating on the Polish railway market for some time but now it is our moment,” said Ryczek. “We are demonstrating that PKP Cargo can operate productively outside Poland too. And the new route is designed to be just the start. We will soon open up other destinations and other traffic in Germany,”
PKP Cargo had been operating up to the German border and transferring its trains to the third party operator for onward haulage to Elstal/Wustermark because of restrictions to operating permits. The company now reports it has all the all the necessary licenses and operating permits, including the safety permit part B, issued by the German Federal Railway Authority at the end of 2010.
Six block trains a week will now travel along the 400km route from Tychy in Silesia to Elstal/Wustermark in the German state of Brandenburg on behalf of Mosolf.
“We have been saying for a long time that we want to switch traffic from the roads to the railways,” said Dr Jörg Mosolf, CEO of Mosolf. “We are now showing once again how railways can be made more competitive by using intelligent processes.”
He went on to say that rail could emerge as the winning mode of transport given its advantages of quality, price and time.
“It is worthwhile for Fiat and our Italian logistics partner Grimaldi, but also for our German base at Etzin,” added Mosolf. “This is good news for Europe. Economic success helps the environment and safeguards the jobs of all the people and regions involved.”
Fiat’s vice president for supply chain management, Paola Petrone, has also said she is committed to increasing rail’s share of transport in Fiat’s network, as she outlines in an upcoming interview in the April-June issue of Automotive Logistics. Fiat now moves more than 33% of the cars its builds and distributes in Europe by rail.
