Running between the Voestalpine steel company’s industrial site at Linz, Austria, and Lower and Upper Bavaria, the Bayern-Shuttle constitutes an example of how rail freight could change the future of European transportation. The service is the product of cooperation between DB Cargo AG and CargoServ, which share the travelled kilometres in Austria and Germany. It transports more than half a million tonnes of cargo by rail while saving almost 8,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year, compared to road haulage.

Both DB Cargo and CargoServ use CO2-neutral electricity in the route. Moreover, the service has another characteristic: it does not leave even one kilometre of transportation unused. To be more precise, the shuttle train leaves Linz full of steel transported to car manufacturers in Bavaria. On its way back, though, it does not travel empty. In contrast, it carries scrap from manufacturing companies back to Voestalpine’s industrial site. Consequently, we are talking about a service that uses full freight capacities, runs in green energy and completes a sustainable cycle of trips.

Shared experience and perspective

The two companies share years of collaboration and know each other very well. Their seamless relationship through the years allows them to function on the same wavelength and provide customer and environment-oriented services. Simultaneously, Voestalpine is exclusively cooperating with CargoServ, making the new shuttle a perfectly tailored service for its needs. According to Hubert Zajicek, Member of the Management Board of Voestalpine AG and Head of the Steel Division, the new service will expand the climate-friendly and sustainable rail freight transport between Voestalpine’s production site at Linz and its automobile customers in Bavaria.

In the same tone, Sigrid Nikutta, CEO of DB Cargo, underlined the new service’s importance in terms of flexibility and environmental consciousness. “Our new Bayern shuttle is not only fast, but it is also flexible and can accommodate production fluctuations to the day. That suits the industrial customers very much. And the new electric and hybrid models from the major German premium manufacturers leave significantly fewer CO2 traces in production and logistics”, she commented.

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