French railway operator VIIA and Danish international shipping and logistics company DFDS will collaborate to create a sea-rail corridor connecting Turkey with the United Kingdom. Parts of these services were already active, but the new partnership sees the involvement of the French ports of Sète and Calais as signatories.

The main new feature of this agreement is the inclusion of the Turkish port of Izmir. The other port involved when it comes to Turkey is Yalova. However, a sea connection to the port of Sète and then a rail link to Calais in this context have been there since May 2022. It is not yet known when services from Izmir within this framework will start, but they might be open to the transportation of semi-trailers thanks to VIIA’s partnership with Lohr.

As VIIA explained on LinkedIn, this intermodal initiative entails sea shipping operated by DFDS from Yalova and Izmir, in western Turkey, to the port of Sète, in southern France. There, the goods will be moved onto the rail, and VIIA will take them to the port of Calais, in the north of the country, where they will be reloaded into DFDS ships and reach Tilbury, in the UK. VIIA and DFDS have been cooperating on other projects to boost the modal shift to rail in France concerning cargo from Turkey via sea. One year ago, for example, the two companies launched an intermodal rail-sea service along the Yalova-Sète-Paris axis to boost Ro-Ro rail traffic.

Also read:

• France-Spain rail line re-opening back on track?
• How much will the disruptions in the Alps cost for rail freight operators?
• Modalis: ‘Locomotives scarce for operators taking over Fret SNCF’