Combined Transport Transports 15.9% Fewer Units in 2023

The Kombiverkehr KG concluded the fiscal year 2023 with a total of 815,467 truck shipments (one shipment corresponds to the capacity of a truck) or 1.63 million TEU, which were shifted from road to climate-friendly rail. Compared to the previous year, this represents a total decrease of 15.9 percent in transported containers, swap bodies, and semi-trailers.

(Frankfurt/Main) Within the two business areas of National and International Transport, the shipment volume was 186,856 truck shipments (-10.1 percent) and 628,611 truck shipments (-17.5 percent), respectively. A total of 19 million gross tons of goods were transported climate-friendly by rail. This allowed the customers of the Frankfurt company to save 1.2 million tons of carbon dioxide through their intermodal engagement alone in the last year.

Weak EU Economy, Strikes, Cost Pressure, and Quality Losses

After a slightly positive business development in 2022, the past fiscal year was particularly affected by a decline in demand for national and international transport services, quality losses due to construction work on the rail network, strikes in France and Germany, as well as weather-related influences in Alpine traffic and the temporary closure of the Gotthard Base Tunnel. “These negative framework conditions have even compounded in parts and, combined with high cost pressure due to diversion traffic and enormous energy costs for the railways, have led to a critical overall situation. Unfortunately, this continues after the turn of the year,” says Armin Riedl, Managing Director of Kombiverkehr KG. Already at the beginning of 2023, the Frankfurt operator had to adjust its transport prices and impose an additional energy surcharge, which further exacerbated competitiveness and widened the price gap between rail and road.

Lack of Planning Security

Kombiverkehr also sees a lack of planning security for companies in the industry and KV users regarding track price funding. The current situation in the federal budget with monetary cuts, including in rail freight transport, is making track usage more expensive for operators and freight forwarders again. “A funding initiative that is actually aimed at significantly increasing the market share of rail in terms of CO₂ savings is thus almost obsolete and will not make it easier for us as operators to achieve a short- and medium-term turnaround in business development. Especially since extensive renovation measures on important sections of track in Germany are also pending this year, which will strongly influence the price-performance ratio in combined transport,” adds managing director colleague Heiko Krebs.

Decisions at EU Level of Great Importance

On the way to CO₂ neutrality, the Commission is preparing to completely reorganize the transport sector in the EU through the “Greening Freight Package” as part of the “Green Deal”. This will involve not only the reissuing of regulations for dimensions and weights and the KV directive but also the complete internalization of all external costs in the transport sector. “In principle, we strongly support the new regulations to finally gain clarity on some significant issues for the industry that have long been overdue. Furthermore, we see the opportunity for equal competitive conditions, where each mode of transport can leverage its specific advantages within a functioning market. However, we also see the great danger that the plans could get stuck halfway, thus cementing the imbalance between rail and road. And that is exactly what threatens now – also because the Commission has only introduced the new regulations at the last minute of the legislative period,” Riedl expresses his concerns about the further progress in the ongoing negotiations. The revision of the KV directive must also be considered in conjunction with the adjustment of the regulations for dimensions and weights as well as “Count Emissions”. “Especially regarding the latter, we are advocating that all external costs be included in the assessment of emissions and efficiency, not just carbon dioxide. Additionally, we warn against endless bureaucracy in assessing which transport is ecologically efficient and thus eligible for funding. We advocate for a pragmatic, simple, and practical approach that does not burden users of combined transport with additional costs,” says Riedl.

Automated Processing in Terminals Started

Together with the German Handling Company Rail-Road (DUSS) and the Kombi-Terminal Ludwigshafen, the Frankfurt operator is pushing for the digital processing of loading units in the terminals. The long-term goal is to make driver processing completely automated and thus contactless, so that deliveries and pickups can occur without stops for truck drivers and be carried out more time-efficiently. With the driver app of the terminals, this is already possible today at locations in Ludwigshafen, Nuremberg, Duisburg, Hamburg, Kornwestheim, Munich, and Ulm. “At the Leipzig terminal, we additionally started a two-month pilot operation for simplified processing for delivering and picking up trucks together with DUSS in mid-January. Currently, over 80 percent of loading units are successfully running in the testing process. In the future, we want to offer processing via the driver app for loading units with hazardous goods as well. Unfortunately, there is still no digital continuity in identifying at the truck gate for these transports, which leads to manual processing at the counter,” Heiko Krebs not only highlights the progress in this digitization project but also points out further important expansion stages. In parallel, the development of a comparable digital information process via the data hub KV 4.0 is also planned, so that freight forwarders can participate in contactless processing in the future through their own systems.

At the beginning of the year, Kombiverkehr KG expanded its range of services on two transport corridors. In the Southeast European transport, customers from forwarding and logistics have been receiving greater flexibility in scheduling their intermodal transports with Turkey and Greece since the beginning of January. The company increased the departure frequency on the Munich – Trieste v.v. connection from three to five weekly round trips. From the port of Trieste, the port terminals Pendik, Mersin, and Cesme in Turkey, as well as Patras in Greece, are accessible through continuous bookings in the one-stop-shop procedure. Additional connecting transports are available from Munich-Riem both within Germany and to and from various terminals in the Netherlands, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Poland, Norway, and Sweden.

Expansion of Swedish Transport

In Northern European transport, the company has supplemented the schedule with a special two-way offer to and from Sweden. Since January, the Lübeck Dänischburg CTL terminal has received a direct connection that can be booked by any freight forwarder via the fixed crossing to Hallsberg and Stockholm. The Stockholm Norra (Rosersberg) terminal, located about 30 kilometers north of Stockholm, is served. The same applies to another new continuous domestic Swedish connection for trailers and containers from Malmö port via Norrköping to Stockholm and back. The combination of ferry from Lübeck-Scandinavian Kai and rail from Malmö can be booked continuously or individually.

Photo: © Kombiverkehr