FRANCE\\\


The port of Calais says that it plans to launch a new intermodal rail service to and from Le Boulou, near Perpignan on the French-Spanish border in September 2015, offering shippers to and from the UK an alternative to all-road transport. The rail motorway project officially announced


was


by the French Minister of Transport, Frédéric Cuvillier, on 18 September 2013 and work has been going on since then to improve infrastructure at the port. Work on a new road-rail


interchange terminal at the port, capable of handling 160 trailers a day, is due to start shortly, said Franck-Edouard Tiberghien, who is in charge of the project at the port of Calais. He told FBJ: “We are still at the detailed technical studies stage; actual works should finally start in December 2014.” At the moment, the vast


majority of freight at the port of Calais arrives and departs by


road, the only significant rail flows being trade cars destined for Sheerness and Grimsby. However, the new ‘rail motorway’ service could produce enough unaccompanied unitised freight to fill the equivalent of two round trips per day on the Calais-Dover route, says the port authority, helping to reduce the number of trucks by 12-18% on the Perpignan-Calais corridor and cutting air pollution. It is expected that rail traffic


will use the current capacity on existing Calais-Dover ferry services but might justify dedicated services in the future if critical volumes are achieved. Calais port says that overall


growth in the cross-Channel freight market is currently almost 4.5% and its major competitor, Eurotunnel, is capacity constrained. It adds that the Rail Motorway


Multimodal Platform could be used by 95% of the European semi-trailers and hauliers will not


have to invest in specific trailers in order to use the service. The new road rail interchange


plan is separate from the ambitious Calais Premier project, which envisages a greatly expanded port – including new


container revolutionary capacity fast –


large-scale warehousing and a


new


road rail transfer system, the Cargobeamer. According to the port,


developer DCB International is still in discussion with potential


project leads before launching construction. But the port hopes that the return of solid economic growth in the UK will soon allow a start to be made. In late October, CargoBeamer


and real estate developer DCB International set up a joint company in France for cargo handling and transport. The new subsidiary, CargoBeamer France, is described as a bridgehead for the opening of the French market and its first project will be the construction and operation


Issue 8 2014 - Freight Business Journal


19 Calais set to welcome first intermodal trains in 2015


of a terminal for transshipment of semi-trailers in Calais. France is an important a


transit country in the flow of goods from Great Britain and the Iberian Peninsula said president of the new company, Dr Imad Jenayeh. The


planned terminal in


Calais is scheduled to begin operation in late 2015 and will have a capacity of 800 trailers per day have. It will be built in the Premier multimodal logistics park Calais which is being built by DCB International.. Didier Caudard-Breille,


president of DCB International noted that every year, about 3.2 million trucks pass othrough Calais on their way to or from the UK.


CargoBeamer’s selling point is


that it allows standard trailers to be used in intermodal transport as there is no requirement to physically liſt the unit on or off the rail wagon. A spokesman for Cargobeamer told FBJ: “If you liſt


trailers, you need to strengthen them, but Cargobeamer uses a push system that moves the trailers horozontally


on and


off the wagons.” It is also much quicker than crane systems as several trailers can be moved on or off the train simulataneously – loading of a complete train can be accomplished in as little as 15 minutes. A prototype is already


being operated on behalf of Volkswagen Logistics between the Saar region of Germany and Wolfsburg and a second link between North Rhine- Westphalia and Northern Italy through the Gotthard tunnel is planned. The Cargobeamer spokesman


added that the actual services serving


its Calais terminal


have not yet been decided, although a link to East Europe was one possibility. Eventually, Cargobeamer envisages a network of its terminals across Europe.


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