photo: Metro Cargo´s press releases/Metro Cargo
Metrocargo Italia is an intermodal operator providing services between Italy and France since 2013.
The company provides connections between Northern Italy and France via Genoa-Vintimille, with weekly services both in North-Western Italy (Mortara-PV, Castelguelfo-PR, Borgo San Dalmazzo-CN) and North-Eastern Italy (Valdaro-MN, Portogruaro-VE, San Giorgio di Nogaro-UD) with equipment: 300 swap bodies and 250 wagons, handled swap bodies (2019): 15000 investments (biennium 2019-20): 1.45 million euro and VoP (2019): 10.7 million euro.
As a result of its growth over the last 3 years, Metrocargo Italia has been included among the 400 Italian companies Champions of Growth, the research done by Istituto Tedesco Qualità ITQF and La Repubblica Affari & Finanza which rewards the most dynamic companies in Italy.
Here are some facts in figures:
17th November 2017: first train arriving at Borgo San Dalmazzo yard from Miramas
September 2017-January 2018: first trains at the port of La Spezia
November 2018: first reload of goods from Cuneo towards France
January 2019: start of Borgo San Dalmazzo-Portogruaro connection
February 2019: first reload of goods from Portogruaro to Borgo San Dalmazzo
April 2019-July 2019: first trains at Port of Genoa
April 2020: start of Borgo San Dalmazzo-Valdaro connection
7th May 2020: first train of cereals between Marghera and Borgo San Dalmazzo
Today only the transport of certain categories of goods by rail and saturated trains proves to be competitive.
Considering the difficulty of making intermediate stops where some units can be loaded or unloaded quickly, it makes it economically sustainable to run a train only from point "A" to point "B", necessarily positioned on "strong" relationships and on which it focuses particularly relevant traffic.
To recover the volume lost by national intermodal transport in the last 10 years and turn it into a growth factor for rail freight, we must focus on two “technical" factors that today limit it considerably competitiveness, i.e.:
- Times (and costs) related to shunting.
- Need to saturate the train aggregating different goods.
The company`s vision of a “subway of goods” takes the form of a shift from current “point to point” approach to a new “stop and go” philosophy:
This operating mode can encourage the emergence of a widespread intermodality in the service of territories crossed by the main railway lines.
The subway of goods can be done by placing leaner and more flexible logistic stations alongside major nodes of the network where to (un)load fast and under the catenary even single parts of the train:
his new concept allows rail freight to become equivalent to passenger rail freight: intermediate stops increase the fill rate of the train.
