Collicare, a Norwegian logistics company, will inaugurate a new rail freight service between Italy and Sweden. The first train will be dispatched from Italy on Saturday, 4 February. Swedish company Hector Rail and Dutch BLS will take care of traction operations.

In December, Collicare claimed that the shift of this service from road to rail should have been effective in the early spring of 2023. However, the company managed to set everything up ahead of schedule. The service will connect Cremona, 90 kilometres southeast of Milan, with Skaraborg, in southern Sweden. One weekly roundtrip has been scheduled for this service, with a transit time terminal-to-terminal of roughly two days. After leaving Italy, the train will cross Switzerland to then navigate its way through Germany up to Denmark. From there, the train can reach Sweden via the Oresund Bridge.

Departures from the Trasporti Pesanti terminal in Cremona will be scheduled on Saturdays, while trains will leave Skaraborg on Tuesdays, heading back to Italy or further transporting the goods to the Nordic countries. Each train is expected to handle around 1,100 tons of goods. As the Collicare spokesperson highlighted, cargo from Sweden will mostly be industrial, including paper and pulp. On the other hand, trains in Italy will be loaded with mainly food products, for example, pasta and tomatoes.

Collicare’s terminal-to-terminal solution

Collicare offers Full Truck Load (FTL) or Less than Truck Load (LTL) on this route. According to the company, shifting this service from road to rail will help save up to 89 per cent of the emissions caused by trucks, equaling almost three tons per FTL. Collicare will also offer logistics services and transport to and from the train terminals. From Skaraborg, the goods will be further distributed in Sweden and the Nordic countries. To this end, Collicare claims they can deploy biogas-powered trucks to increasingly reduce emissions.

Collicare and Hector Rail are at it again

Collicare has its headquarters in Vestby, Norway, with offices in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Germany, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Italy, Turkey, China, and India. The company specialises in all kinds of transportation, including rail, road, sea, and air freight. Headquartered in Sweden but also operating in Norway, Germany, and Denmark, Hector Rail is owned by the private investment fund EQT. This is not the first time that the two companies are collaborating. Since 2017, in fact, the two companies have launched a rail freight service between Parma, in Italy, with Rolvsoy, in Norway.

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