photo: Christoph Schneider/Flickr/GYSEV CARGO: A company with tradition, a modern fleet and stable growth
Company GYSEV has a great history. Considerable ties connected to this Sopron-based company GYSEV date back to 1872, when the very first agreement of concession was signed, and it allowed the first railway track from Győr through Sopron up to the former state border at Ebenfurth.
By 1921, the year of the Peace Treaty of Trianon the railways were split in two even though the operations remained the same.
The very first bonded warehouse in Sopron was built in 1972 and six years later, in 1978 the important Duty-free zone and container terminal services were launched and within one short year, the Terminal expansion and conversion into a logistics center took place.
During the period between 1994-97, the container train projects toward the Northern ports (HHCE: Hamburg, Bremerhaven, RHCE: Rotterdam) were established, operated by a swiss partner company, ICF S.A., later with connections toward the Balkan too (DCE: Danubia from/to Romania, ETCE: Türkey: Halkali, EHCE: Greece: Thessaloniki, Athen), Sopron had big importance as rail hub between the Western part of Europe, Central-East Europe, and the mentioned Balkan countries. During these years conventional block trains towards the Balkan started to operate successfully as well.
Since 2011 the transport department of the company is known under the name GYSEV CARGO and Raaberbahn Cargo (as 100 % subsidiary RU. in Austria). As a new company, GYSEV CARGO developed further the container terminal in Sopron. In 2014 the company launched the first GYSEV CARGO locomotives, and the establishment of the Amber Rail Group happened also this year.
“I think that perhaps we were most surprised that, following the decision in Brussels, GYSEV Zrt. had to give up and sell the common connection point and business interests of all MÁV, MÁV Cargo, and Rail Cargo Groups. This meant, that the entire freight business was outsourced from GYSEV to the 2 newly founded companies. In Hungary, with the activity of a railway company, freight, and railway rights under the name GYSEV CARGO, and in Austria with the same rights as Raaberbahn Cargo, the activity started on January 1, 2011, and the previous activity continued under a new framework and conditions. All of this happened with an asset value of € 3.2 million, which also steered us towards free market activity. I can report to you and our present owners that we have managed to multiply this asset value over the past 10 years. There is an asset value of about 15 million euros in the area,” said János Boda, CEO of GYSEV CARGO, at the GYSEV CARGO partner event, which was one of the most important railway events in Hungary of this year.
“We have started our operations with 92 of our own wagons, that has gradually increased to 500 rail cars, that we are trying to operate economically these days. We are operating this fleet with a total of 16 high-performance Vectrons, the oldest of them (?) which is no more than 5 years old. In addition to that, we are operating 5 Tauruses, plus 2 high-performance diesel towing vehicles,” said the CEO of GYSEV CARGO.
“Obviously, we are constantly trying to improve our resources. Thanks to our partnerships and our own activities, we are able to boast of investment resources every year, that allows us to buy more and more assets”, Mr. Boda added.