Railways of the Slovak Republic (ŽSR), the state-owned railway infrastructure company opened a new intermodal terminal -TIP Lužianky- on 8 October. The new facility is located in Lužianky village, close to the city of Nitra in the western part of the country and will maily serve the automotive industry.

TIP Lužianky consists of two parts – the terminal itself and storage facilities with 52 thousand square metres. The new intermodal facility is situated close to the Lužianky station and connected with it by a 1.8-kilometre single non-electrified spur track. At the terminal, the line is transformed into two 700-metre railway sidings equipped with a double-deck loading ramp.

The project was carried out by Slovak companies. The design was provided by PRODEX spol. s r.o. while construction works were performed by STRABAG s.r.o. The construction cost more than 39.9 million Euros and lasted one year.

Automotive industry

The terminal will mainly serve the automotive industry. ŽSR has already signed a long-term agreement until 2048 with Jaguar Land Rover Slovakia s.r.o., subsidiary of the British car manufacturer based in Lužianky. This year, Jaguar Land Rover extended activity of the Slovak factory by moving production of the Land Rover Discovery SUV and other models to the Lužianky facility with a capacity to manufacture up to 150,000 vehicles per year. The first cars will be loaded in TIP Lužianky end of October.

“Our priority is to shift the transport of as many of the goods produced at the (Jaguar Land Rover) factory to rail as possible,” said Ladislav Cengel, State Secretary of the ministry of transport and construction of the Slovak Republic. However, the British giant will not be the single client of TIP Lužianky. Currently, the railway infrastructure company is looking for other partners.

Intermodal facilities

TIP Lužianky is the second intermodal terminal built by ŽSR in the last several years. The first was opened in 2015 near the city of Žilina, northwestern Slovakia. However, its has not been operative due to disagreements between ŽSR and private intermodal operators. In August this year, the railway infrastructure company announced again the tender to find the operator for the facility.

Besides Lužianky and Žilina, there are several other intermodal terminals in Slovakia. Most of them are owned or operated by foreign investors – Rail Cargo Operator – CSKD (member of OEBB Group), Metrans (Czech railway carrier, member of HHLA Group), Interport (Czech transport company) and TransContainer (the subsidiary of Russian Railways, RZHD).