PKP Cargo has announced a tender for the purchase of 936 railway platforms to support its growing intermodal business. The purchase is co-funded by EU funds and is the largest such purchase the company has ever made.

President of PKP Cargo Czesław Warsewicz said: “Intermodal transport is becoming one of our specialties, and from year to year this market segment grows by at least a dozen or so percent. The upcoming years promise to be similar in growth and by purchasing these platforms we will be ready to meet market requirements.”

New Silk Road

The significant increase in intermodal transport is partly due to increased volumes on the New Silk Road, where Poland forms an important transit country. Cargo is transported via seaports to and from China. “The intermodal market will grow, both on the New Silk Road and on the North-South European corridor connecting the Baltic Sea with the Adriatic Sea and the Black Sea”, Warsewicz said.

This year so far, the volumes of intermodal transport increased by more than twenty per cent. “Only in the first half of 2018, we transported almost 4.5 million tonnes of intermodal cargo, which is double the volume compared to 2013”, said Warsewicz. In the January-July period, the group transported over 63.5 million tonnes of cargo, accounting for a 4.4 per cent year-on-year increase. Compared to the same period in 2016, this is an increase of 18.5 per cent, the online rail journal Rynek Kolejowy reported.

Other transactions

The company also plans to purchase multi-system locomotives designed for servicing the international connections. Such locomotives allow for streamlining of transports, as it is not necessary to switch over the electric locomotives at the entrance to another country, where the traction network has different technical parameters than the one that operates in Poland, the topman explained.

In addition to purchasing new railcars, the company is also said to sell over 2 thousand of its older wagons by the end of this year. These cars are not used at the moment because their properties do not meet the needs of the market – the Polish Press Agency reported. According to Rynek Kolejowy, the last annual report of the company showed that at the end of 2017, PKP Cargo owned almost 65 thousand wagons. PKP Cargo analyses the condition of freight wagons on a current basis and takes actions to match their quantity and structure to the market needs, the company said.