photo: Bulmarket /Bulmarket
Today we will present you interview with one of the leading specialists in BULMARKET, Mr. Stanimir Syarov. Mr. Stanimir Syarov is a logistic manager at BULMARKET GROUP. He has great experience in logistics, especially in rail freight transport.
Bulmarket Rail Cargo Ltd. is part of BULMARKET GROUP and is the first & biggest private railway undertaking in Bulgaria. The company is focused on providing tailor-made solutions for its clients in sectors such as petrochemical, agricultural, construction, steel, and others.
Bulmarket performs domestic, international, and transit railway transport through Bulgaria. The company operates on all border crossings and organizes shunting operations in the big Black Sea ports, as well as all major industrial areas in Bulgaria. Bulmarket delivers additional services such as customs representation, forwarding services, maintenance of wagons, and fleet management.
In 2020 you registered impressive results; you crossed the limit of 1 billion. gross ton / km. There seems to be no pandemic for Bulmarket. What is the secret of the excellent work of the company?
Indeed, Bulmarket rail complicated rate 2020 in terms of the result in the effectiveness of the company. The year was quite successful for us operationally and commercially and was marked by many different events and developments we did in the company.
In 2020, we increased our fleet with two smart locomotives, we mainly increased our park with traditional cone and retry wagon. In general, we were able to diversify our customer portfolio.
Also, we made an important step for us by getting a license for operation for the Romanian market which made us now an international railway company and not just local market. We established our Romanian subsidiary called United Railways and we started operations with some countries such as Slovenia, and we already started working on this factory and we already started with activities in the wagon maintenance and locomotive maintenance in this factory.
Because of the pandemic, we saw a drop in a couple of things on our customer side, for example, fuel and energy problems. But we had huge growth in for example construction materials and transportation. And we are happy to see that in 2020 a lot of big companies and customers realized that rail transport is very reliable and starting to grow more into it.
Many of your colleagues in Europe are paying close attention to intermodal logistics services. Do you see Bulmarket as an active participant in this business direction?
We see a constant increase in interest in the market in the Balkans, generally and particularly in Bulgaria. Some services started that started in the last year and this year and new and interesting projects including somewhere Bulmarket as a company seem bolt, but my personal opinion is that unfortunately the region, the Balkan region is not fully ready for the intermodal due to the Slovak region on our infrastructure and lack of modern intermodal terminals in the region.
As I told you, we participate, in some projects and we are constantly working on developing and switching float from automotive, from auto transport to rail transport including our group of companies, our subsidiary companies who are dealing with some production.
We see that there is growth in interest but there needs a lot to be done in every level, in order for the intermodal logistic, to become high enough quality to be able to be competitive to auto transport.
Some countries in Europe significantly reduced the prices for railway infrastructure, to make the railways more competitive with road transport. Would you comment on the railway infrastructure in Bulgaria, and do you have ideas and suggestions for its improvement?
Probably, haha. It is an interesting question but you would be surprised in Bulgaria, on the contrary, in the last year infrastructure taxes increased between 5-10% during the pandemic year. This all is not helpful for the whole industry, not only for our company and railway transport in general in Bulgaria but we think there is a lot to improve. We see some projects, we as a country, we are going in the right direction. We hope that infrastructure will soon be of a much higher quality and we will provide railway in Bulgaria, much better service itself.
Tell us more about using some new railway technologies in your company? Are you following the trends of digitization?
Bulmarket group, as a group of companies, is known to be the something in Bulgaria for most of it business. Bulmarket is the first private railway undertaking. In Bulgaria, we are the first that started stations and a bioproduction company.
Our company constructed its modern company in Bulmarket the first LMG terminal in Bulgaria. So yes, we are constantly looking at how to implement new technologies in our process and we improve a couple of things in the company but with respecting surrounding market and of course international regulations and trends in the industry. We are consistently trying to be, to modernize and we are planning to invest money in the modernization of our fleet, our existing fleet and purchase additional locomotives and wagons of the generation.
1. In 2020 you registered impressive results; you crossed the limit of 1 billion. gross ton / km. There seems to be no pandemic for Bulmarket. What is the secret of the excellent work of the company?
· Indeed, Bulmarket rail complicated rate 2020 in terms of the result in the effectiveness of the company. The year was a quite successful for us operationally and commercially and was marked by many different events and developments we did in the company.
In 2020, we increased our fleet with two smart locomotives, we mainly increased our park with traditional cone and retry wagon. In general, we were able to diversify our costumer portfolio.
Also, we made an important step for us by getting a license for operation for the Romanian market which made us now an international railway company and not just local market. We established our Romanian subsidiary called United Railways and we started operations with some countries such as Slovenia, and we already started working on this factory and we already started with activities in wagon maintenance and locomotive maintenance in this factory.
Because of the pandemic we saw a drop in couple of things on our customer side, for example, fuel and energy problems. But we had huge growth in for example construction material and transportation. And we are happy to see that in 2020 a lot of big companies and costumers realized that rail transport is very reliable and starting to grow more into it.
2. Many of your colleagues in Europe are paying close attention to intermodal logistics services. Do you see Bulmarket as an active participant in this business direction?
· We see a constant increase in interest in the market in the Balkans, generally and particularly in Bulgaria. Some services started that started in the last year and this year and new and interesting projects including somewhere Bulmarket as a company seem bolt, but my personal opinion is that unfortunately the region, the Balkan region is not fully ready for the intermodal due to the Slovak region on our infrastructure and lack of modern intermodal terminals in the region.
As I told you, we participate, in some projects and we are constantly working on developing and switching float from automotive, from auto transport to rail transport including of our group of companies, our subsidiary companies who are dealing with some production.
We see that there is growth in interest but there needs a lot to be done in every level, in order for the intermodal logistic, to become high enough quality to be able to be competitive to auto transport.
3. Some countries in Europe significantly reduced the prices for railway infrastructure, to make the railways more competitive with road transport. Would you comment on the railway infrastructure in Bulgaria, and do you have ideas and suggestions for its improvement?
· Probably, haha. It is an interesting question but you would be surprised in Bulgaria, on the contrary, in the last year infrastructure taxes increased between 5-10% during the pandemic year. This all is not helpful for the whole industry, not only for our company and railway transport in general in Bulgaria but we think there is a lot to improve. We see some projects, we as a country, we are going in the right direction. We hope that infrastructure will soon be of a much higher quality and we will provide railway in Bulgaria, much better service itself.
4. Tell us more about using some new railway technologies in your company? Are you following the trends of digitization?
· Bulmarket group, as a group of companies, is known to be the something in Bulgaria for most of it business. Bulmarket is the first private railway undertaking. In Bulgaria, we are the first that started stations and a bioproduction company.
Our company constructed its modern company in Bulmarket the first LMG terminal in Bulgaria. So yes, we are constantly looking at how to implement new technologies in our process and we improve a couple of things in the company but with respecting surrounding market and of course international regulations and trends in the industry. We are consistently trying to be, to modernize and we are planning to invest money in the modernization of our fleet, our existing fleet and purchase additional locomotives and wagons of the generation.