Samskip expands Duisburg rail services to add four key North-South routes

Separate new rail services connect the Samskip Terminal Duisburg to Padborg, Macon, Padua and Verona

Leading European multimodal and logistics group Samskip has added four new routes to the network of rail services connecting to its Duisburg rail terminal, in an ambitious expansion which principally targets importers and exporters in Denmark, France and Italy, Samskip said in its news release.

Separate new rail services connect the Samskip Terminal Duisburg to Padborg (Denmark, three times per week), Macon (France, 4xw), Padua (Italy, 4xw) and Verona (Italy, 3xw by shuttle).  The Duisburg terminal is already the fulcrum for Samskip north-south rail services between Germany, Sweden and Italy, also connecting north to Denmark, east to Lubeck, Poland and beyond, and west to Samskip’s high-frequency shortsea connections in Rotterdam and Amsterdam.

At a time of heightening driver shortages across Europe’s road haulage sector, the new rail service additions build reliable, efficient and sustainable rail service capacity along four major European routes, each connecting Duisburg direct with leading regional centres for unitized freight.

With each train having capacity for 40 unitized loads, the new services add significant capacity and scope to Duisburg’s existing rail links into Italy, which already cover five destinations. Samskip is also replacing a third-party connection into a key region in France with its own service, and creating an additional focus for Danish operations with the reach to serve destinations to the south by road and provide alternative routing to the north to/from Sweden.  

Handling up to 250,000 units loads per year, the Duisburg terminal features eight 720 m length tracks for transhipment and two more for shunting. Investments include high-tech OCR scanning at the gatehouse, whose use for load registration, prioritization and slot allocation maximises the pre-planning and exception management gains available to terminal operations. Shippers moving loads internationally within the EU are also entitled to dispatch loads over the road weighing two to four tonnes more than conventional hauliers if their shipments include a multimodal dimension. “Multimodal is not only a more carbon efficient method of transport, but increasingly cost efficient,” Grootkarzijn emphasised. “With only one handling operation required at Duisburg, we ensure that pick-up and delivery is always fast and reliable. These new services represent another important step towards Samskip’s vision for ensuring that the most sustainable logistics solution in the freight market is also increasingly distinguishable for its ease of use.”