MSC to build another rail terminal at Zaragoza PLAZA Logistics Centre
The Zaragoza PLAZA Railway Logistics Centre, in northeastern Spain, will soon have a second MSC rail freight terminal. The company is ready to invest 20 million euros for the construction of the new facility, which will feature three tracks to handle 750-metre convoys.
The topic was discussed by Ignacio Ballester, deputy general director of MSC Spain in an interview with Spanish newspaper Heraldo. The decision to build a terminal began with MSC’s acquisition of over 61,000 square metres of land from Aragón Plataforma Logistica (APL), a company operating various logistics platforms in the region, in the summer of 2022.
Ballester highlighted that the company moves around 25,000 containers to and from Zaragoza. The new terminal will serve as an intermodal facility, receiving and sending goods by rail from Spanish ports and transferring them on the road for first and last-mile operations. It is planned to have a storage facility of 6,000 TEUs. Construction should start before spring and the terminal should be ready in about a year.
Zaragoza: a hub for giants
Despite the indefinite postponement of the rolling highway which would connect the Aragonese capital with Spain’s largest port, Algeciras, Zaragoza remains a hub for big players. Other than MSC, for example, the PLAZA Logistics Centre sees the presence of COSCO, which has been managing a rail terminal there since 2013 through its subsidiary CSP Spain. Moreover, Danish shipping giant Maersk is a shareholder and one of the operators of the Zaragoza Maritime Terminal. Zaragoza is also part of CMA CGM’s network. The French company runs a shuttle train to and from the port of Valencia.
The city is located in a strategic place, as it is between the ports of Barcelona, Bilbao, and Valencia, three of the four largest ports in Spain. The Spanish infrastructure manager Adif is also invested in enhancing the role of rail freight in Zaragoza. One of the major projects is the upgrade of the Zaragoza-Teruel-Sagunto line which, once completed, should allow the transit of longer freight trains to transit from Valencia to Bilbao.
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