The expansion will be implemented in early April. It will help to grow the capacity of the company’s French connection between the English Channel and the Mediterranean Sea. CargoBeamer will start offering daily departures in both directions.

With a transit time of 26 hours, the Calais-Perpignan route is open for all semi-trailers, including non-craneable ones. In the northbound direction, the connection provides access to North Sea ports. In the opposite direction, freight can reach southern France and northern Spain.

Also in Germany

At the same time, Captrain has announced the introduction of a new service in Germany in cooperation with LIT Speditions. As part of their SmartRail Logistics joint venture, daily train service has been introduced between the Roland Terminal in Bremen and the Port of Stuttgart. This new connection enhances the existing intermodal network, specifically targeting industrial and commercial enterprises along the key north-south corridor.

Rail transport, handled by Captrain, includes connections to the abovementioned main terminals as well as Bremen-Sebaldsbrück and Sindelfingen. LIT coordinates the pre- and post-carriage by truck.

“With the new connection, we can reliably, quickly, and flexibly cover diverse logistics needs on this important corridor”, commented Jérôme Méline, Managing Director of Captrain Germany and SmartRail Logistics. “Whether large or small shipments, conventional or intermodal freight, with or without rail sidings: Together with SmartRail, we enable suitable logistics solutions for a wide range of companies, products, and logistics requirements.”

On-board ETCS L2

The ETCS version which will be tested over the next month in Italy allows for continuous information communication. This means that locomotives and trains can be constantly monitored in real-time, while with ETCS L1 the information is transmitted only when a train passes above a trackside balise.

‘Stable situation, but costs worry’

ETCS is always a hot topic, especially regarding the financing and the fragmentation among Member States, which are carrying out the project at different speeds. Lacchini pointed out that, thanks to the efforts made by the country’s infrastructure manager RFI, the situation is stable at the moment. “The fact that RFI agreed to proceed with the implementation of ETCS BL3.4 on board locomotives represented a major step forward for locomotive owners”, he explained.

However, “the organisation of test runs remains quite complex given the large number of fleets affected in relation to network availability”, Lacchini added. Another issue concerns the costs, which are higher than those imagined a few years ago, increasing the complexity of its financial sustainability. Various industry associations, including ERFA, AERRL and ALLRAIL, went as far as saying that the current costs for ETCS deployment outweigh the advantages it will bring.

“DB Cargo France is again impacted by the closure of line, again cut for more than a week, after being closed for 18 months. Since the reopening we are struggling to have the volumes from the previous years back, and this episode is not good news. SNCF Réseau is announcing to resume the operations this week-end, we are scheduling to have our trains back on track on Monday”, added DB Cargo France CEO Alexandre Gallo.

Damages also on the Italian side

Other than the issues in France, there were some flooding events on the Italian side of the railway as well. On 1 July, the railway near Bardonecchia, 20 kilometres from Modane, was temporarily closed, but has since been reopened. These kinds of extreme weather events are occurring in a more frequent and violent manner in many European places.

This area between Italy and France specifically saw a massive landslide closing the railway between August 2023 and March 2025. This development has had terrible consequences for the Italian industry and economy in general, and a great impact on the European economy as well. The situation should improve once the Turin-Lyon new link opens, but that will be well into the 2030s.

The data was put together by the National Commission for Markets and Competition (CNMC) and considered trains/kilometre, net tonnes, net tonnes/kilometre and revenues.

As the graph shows, the numbers are better than the last quarter in all categories. However, comparisons with the same period of 2024 show lower growth and even negative figures.

This is especially true for the block train sector, which lost some ground in all categories on a year-on-year basis despite the positive comparison with the previous quarter.

On the other hand, intermodality seems to be growing since it performed positively in all categories except trains/kilometre when compared year-on-year.

Market outlook

The CNMC data on the first quarter of 2025 also confirmed recent market trend: Renfe Mercancías is slowly but constantly losing volumes, while Medway continues to grow. The subsidiary of MSC is the only company that has posted better figures year-on year rather than on a quarterly basis. For these data, CNMC only provides net tonnes, net tonnes/kilometre and trains/kilometre for the five main operators, leaving out the revenues.

In total, the six weekly round trips add up to 24,000 trucks removed from France’s roads annually. There are around 50,000 trucks that pass through the Cherbourg port each year. It also saves on 20,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. “It demonstrates how rail freight offers a credible and concrete alternative to road transport, even on domestic flows”, Captrain says.

Connecting markets

The rail highway project between Cherbourg and Bayonne was first unveiled in early 2020. After years of planning, infrastructure upgrades, and pandemic-related delays, the service is now underway. It connects France’s Atlantic corridor with key ferry ports serving the UK, Ireland and Spain.

In order to make this service a reality, France had to install two new rail-road terminals at both ends of the routes. Moreover, the Port of Cherbourg needed a renewed connection to the national network, after a 20-year hiatus.

“That continuity and the market positions achieved through our diversification strategy have paid off, securing solid positions in our markets and generating profitable growth while stabilizing our debt.”

Positive results from the rail freight cluster

Rail Logistics Europe (RLE), which groups all of the French state railways freight subsidiaries, posted an EBITDA of 211 million euros, an increase of 11.4 per cent on the previous 12 months. Turnover rose 7.9 per cent to just over 1.8 billion euros driven by dynamic activity in certain market segments. Year-over-year growth was also due in part to the fact that 2023 results had been negatively affected by prolonged industrial action.

Last year was characterised by major upheaval for RLE with the discontinuity of Fret SNCF, ordered by the European Commission following suspicions of receiving illegal state aid. The rail freight unit was forced to relinquish 23 traffic routes. “Yet, in addition to the favourable basis of comparison resulting from the strikes in 2023 which disrupted access to the rail network, the withdrawal of these routes was offset by an aggressive push to expand business overall, despite competition from road transport. Volumes were thus higher than projected, particularly for chemicals and petroleum products,” SNCF noted.

Captrain’s pan-European business was resilient in a tough macroeconomic environment. In France, Captrain teamed up with Eiffage Rail to win a contract for renovating high-speed and conventional lines using special works trains. This contract will run from 2025 to 2030. Naviland Cargo, which specialises in the transport of maritime containers by rail, posted a solid year, boosted by its acquisition of Lardon at the end of 2023. Forwarding arm Forwardis posted a record year in terms of traffic volumes in the gas, petrol and chemicals segments.

As for RLE’s rolling highway operator, VIIA, 2024 was a buoyant year with an increase in frequencies and load factors. The Bettembourg-Le Boulou Lorry Rail service, stretching from Luxembourg to the French-Spanish border, achieved record load factors. As for the Alpine Rail Motorway (AFA), linking France and Italy, it has been suspended since a major landslide in the Maurienne Valley with its resumption expected in the second quarter of 2025.

Towards decarbonisation

Moves to streamline RLE’s business portfolio continued last year, SNCF added. Turning to the development of modal shift and the decarbonisation of goods transport in France, RLE transported more than 30 billion tonne/kilometres of freight in 2024, with 80 per cent of the traction powered by electricity. It was thus able to reduce CO2 emissions by 1.7 million tonnes.

Hupac hails the diversion as a success. “The diesel shuttle on the route on the left bank of the Rhine performed well”, the company says in a press release. Around 20 freight trains could make use of the diversionary route on a daily basis. However, transfer points proved to be a bottleneck, according to Hupac, which was the diversion’s weak point. By the end of the diversion period, capacity was reaching its limits.

French infrastructure needs expansion

Subsequently, Hupac is now calling for infrastructure in the French region to be expanded altogether, referring to Transalpine traffic as needing an impetus for a further modal shift. According to the company, the modal shift has been at a standstill for several years.

“The limited capacity of the German rail network is responsible for this stagnation in Switzerland’s modal shift policy”, Hans-Jörg Bertschi, chairman of the Board of Directors at Hupac, says. “The planned corridor renovations in Germany, involving the closure of main lines for several months, will aggravate the situation until after 2030.”

“In view of the decades-long backlog in the development of the rail axis on the right bank of the Rhine, increasing traffic via France is the only option to prevent stagnation or even a reversal in the modal shift policy,” Bertschi adds. Hupac wants the Belgium – Metz – Strasbourg – Basel axis to be upgraded to a 4-metre corridor, which could shorten the distance from Dutch and Belgian ports to Switzerland by 110 kilometres.

“Tense situation” in Germany

After the positive experience with the diversion, Hupac says that it is now motivated to expand on transportation on the left bank of the Rhine. It wants to create an alternative to the “tense situation” in Germany due to the large amount of upcoming rail closures. “From 2025 we are planning container transit trains with a suitable profile via France, even if this is not yet possible with 4-metre semi-trailers and involves additional costs,” said a company representative.

SNCF underlined that RLE’s markets showed very uneven trends in the first half of 2024, with some industrial verticals struggling, such as steel products, while others were buoyant, i.e. grain shipments.The chemicals vertical did well in France but not in all countries where the group is active. Moreover, the closure of rail services between France and Italy through the Maurienne Valley following a major landslide in August 2023 continued to affect cross-border traffic.

Rolling highways and multimodal transport

After a rough start to the year with various incidents and disruptions, VIIA’s rolling highway services turned in a positive performance. The lorry-rail service between Bettembourg (Luxembourg) and Le Boulou (French Basque Country) reported record load factors. On the other hand, VIIA’s Autoroute Ferroviaire Alpine remained out of service due to the landslides in the Maurienne Valley.

Market conditions have also improved for Naviland Cargo, the group’s forwarding and multi-modal transport operator, after a dip in business at the beginning of the year. The main issues here were triggered by a massive re-routing of ships around Africa, in the context of the Red Sea Crisis. RLE’s rail freight forwarding arm, Forwardis, also signed a memorandum of understanding with Hubei Port Group for European intermodal transport and logistics projects between China and Europe.

Captrain group

Finally, Captrain, which is present in markets in Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland and France, business was patchy but resilient in the first half of the year. In France, Captrain teamed up with construction group Eiffage Rail to win a contract for the renovation of high-speed and standard railway lines using special works trains. This contract will run from 2025 to 2030. Captrain Netherlands was sold to Austrian Rail Cargo Group at the end of May 2024.

The future of Fret SNCF

The discontinuation of Fret SNCF is being implemented to avoid heavy financial sanctions from the European Union. It was projected to reduce the company’s traffic by 30 per cent, its turnover by 20 per cent and its workforce by 10 per cent. As a result, between 15 and 20 of its best-performing routes were ceded to competitors, including several to DB Cargo France.

Fret SNCF will cease to exist at the end of the year and give way to two new rail freight entities, New Fret and New Maintenance. New Fret will be be headed by the current CEO of Fret SNCF, Charles Puech d’Alissac. However, there are restrictions on its scope of activity as under the terms of the discontinuity plan it will be prohibited from operating regular block trains and combined transport for 10 years.

ÖBB characterises the move as a way to “connect the European economic centres with the ports of Europe and thus with the whole world.” Earlier, RCG expanded internationally by establishing subsidiaries in China and Serbia. The price for RCG’s acquisition of Captrain Netherlands was not made available by the parties involved.

Expansion of own traction network

“The Benelux countries are an important market for us. With the expansion of our own traction network, we will also be able to handle our TransFER connections end-to-end as own traction in the future.” ÖBB says that operating its own locomotives and staff provides cost benefits and greater flexibility. “And that means one thing above all: the best quality for our customers.”

ÖBB points to the strategic position of the Netherlands as a factor that made the acquisition an attractive step. There are direct connections between the ports of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Antwerp, as well as important terminals in Geleen and Moerdijk, to the German hinterland.

In addition to the acquisition of Captrain Netherlands, RCG already operates fixed connections between Linz and Rotterdam, Wolfurt and Rotterdam and Linz – Antwerp.

Also read:

• Italian waste goes on the rail to Austria to be transformed into fuel
• RCG launches new connections to Germany and Turkey via Romania
• Rail Cargo Group establishes two new Italian connections

Not bad, not great for the Group’s freight business

The profitability last year of Rail Logistics Europe (RLE), which groups all of the French state railways freight subsidiaries, led by Fret SNCF, expressed as EBITDA, totalled 128 million euros versus 208 million euros for the previous 12 months. Turnover was “virtually stable, despite the difficult environment,” totalling 1.7 billion (-0.5 per cent).
Commenting on the 2023 results and the outlook, a spokesperson for RLE told Railfreight.com: “Increasing energy costs and the resulting crisis in volumes, a strong recovery in the road haulage sector, with competitive rates and a renewed driver pool, all weighed on the performance of RLE’s subsidiaries in 2023.

“We have also suffered the consequences of industrial action linked to pensions and the discontinuity at Fret SNCF, the interruption of a major European rail freight route – through the Maurienne Valley. Against this backdrop, our financial results are not up to scratch,” he added.

Another negative factor last year was the sharp economic slowdown, particularly in the steel and chemicals industries. At the same time, one should not overlook the negative impact that the penalisation of ‘rail motorway’ activity by works on the rail network had, making it necessary to reduce the size of trains or lengthen their journey times.

‘RLE’s business model is strong’

As for RLE’s Europe-wide network, grouped around Captrain, the activity level varied but, overall, “held up well in an unfavourable macroeconomic climate.” Last year saw RLE subsidiary Naviland Cargo strengthen its multimodal road/rail offering with the acquisition of Lardon Transport, a specialist in multimodal transport and container storage. Naviland Cargo has also benefited from investment in wagons totalling 45 million euros.

One bright spot last year was Germany, and the resilience of Captrain and Forwardis helped to offset the below-par performance in the French market. “RLE’s business model is strong, thanks to its group structure and without the effects of the strikes, we would not be far off the mark,” stressed the spokesperson.

Geodis performance dropped

As for Groupe SNCF’s logistics subsidiary, Geodis, after “two exceptional years” for the market, its turnover was down almost 22 per cent on a like-for-like basis last year to 11.6 billion euros (-15 per cent when the normalisation of air and sea freight rates is factored in), impacted by lower volumes due to the global economic slowdown. Nevertheless, it managed to maintain its margins “thanks to a diversified business model and cost productivity initiatives.” EBITDA was down very slightly at just over 1.1 billion euros.

New SNCF freight company to lead future growth

Last year was also marked by the announcement of “a transformation project” for Fret SNCF following the opening in January 2023 of an investigation by the European Commission into aid granted to the company between 2007 and 2019. The Commission suspected that the aid distorted competition in the rail freight market. An agreement reached with the French state made provision for Fret SNCF to relinquish more than 20 traffic routes – a currently ongoing process.

Concerning the discontinuity of Fret SNCF in particular, by January 2024, 15 traffic routes had been relinquished by rail competitors. The spokesperson revealed that the remaining eight will be handed over by the end of the first half of 2024, adding that it was necessary to note that there has been no modal shift to road.

“Despite the discontinuity, the new SNCF rail freight company, entering service in January 2025, with its workforce and turnover, will remain the leader in the French rail freight sector, with a market share of almost 35 per cent,” underlined the spokesperson. Their concluding remark concerned future turnover projections: “As for the outlook, RLE’s turnover is estimated to increase to 1.87 billion euros in 2024, and our objective is to pass the symbolic two billion euros mark within the next two to three years. This shows how ambitious we are in terms of growth and increasing market share.”