Kombiverkehr felt negative factors in international traffic in 2017
Kombiverkehr KG (Frankfurt / Main) closed the 2017 financial year with a total of 958,299 truck consignments (one consignment equals the capacity of a trailer truck) and 1.91 million TEU, respectively, which were transferred from road and sea to rail. Compared to the previous year, this means 2.8 percent less containers, swap bodies and semitrailers were transported.
Despite all this, the demand for intermodal transport services remains high. This became particularly evident in the development of the individual market segments of national transport, the company underlines in a press release.
In transport within Germany, Kombiverkehr increased its truck consignments transported in the de.NETdirekt+ network by 4,662 to a total of 207,589, which is an increase of 2.3 percent. Traffic between the federal territory and the German Baltic Sea ports of Kiel, Lübeck and Rostock, with forwarding services by ferry from and to Scandinavia and the Baltic states, developed even more positively in the 2017 financial year. This traffic segment increased by 7,198 truck consignments or 3.3 percent to 78,991 truck consignments.
In international traffic (excluding the Baltic Sea), the shipment volume dropped to 671,719 truck shipments (-4.9 percent), which was due various reasons. The result in bilateral traffic with Switzerland and in traffic between Germany and Italy via Switzerland was particularly negatively impacted by the effects of the Rhine dam closure at Rastatt in the period from mid-August to early October 2017. Due to the interruption of the route and the lack of or partially restricted detour options, the company registered a significant drop in shipments for seven weeks.
Almost at the same time, the operational situation on the parallel route Germany – Italy via Brenner increased. Accidents, structural measures on the infrastructure and the increasingly frequent and prolonged train controls in Raubling and Rosenheim due to the refugee situation, especially in the second half of the year, caused delays of many trains like never before. In this period, planned regular services in combined transport road-rail could barely be offered any more, reads the media release. Even though Kombiverkehr still achieved a plus of 1.5 percent in traffic via the Brenner pass despite these circumstances, growth was limited to international relations, although there was “a strong demand for environmentally friendly, intermodal offers from freight forwarders.”
The company also felt negative effects on other European corridors, which due to the quality of service of various railway enterprises, which was far from satisfactory, meant reduced the volume of consignments in some areas. In addition, environmental impacts, such as the hurricanes Egon, Xavier and Herwart, which raged only for a few days in Germany, but caused delays and cancellations of trains for almost a week, affected the overall balance of 2017.
Nevertheless, Kombiverkehr has a positive outlook for the year 2018. With a significant increase in the frequency of departures in the network, forwarding companies and logistics companies will again have more train departures on selected routes, with the aim of achieving new consignment growth.
With their commitment to transport consignments on the climate-friendly railway, in 2017 Kombiverkehr KG’s customers relieved the environment by 1.1 million tonnes of CO2.