SNCF-owned Geodis has temporarily suspended its Łódź (Poland)-Barcelona rail freight service citing operational and economic issues. The inaugural trip in June last year transported 44 containers and swap bodies, each capable of carrying a payload of 26 tons.
Offering one round trip weekly, the service was withdrawn at the end of December, Marc Vollet, the French logistics group’s EVP European Road Network, whose remit extends to multi-modal operations, confirmed to Railfreight.com in an interview. The first direct rail freight connection between Poland and Spain carried a broad range of cargo, including automotive, FMCG and retail.
“The service, which after all was in its test phase, has been shelved rather than abandoned,” he underlined. “We experienced some significant rail traffic problems in Germany where a good deal of maintenance and re-development work is currently taking place. Sometimes trains were delayed by up to a week on the scheduled transit times which was just too much for our shipper customers to accept given the efforts they had made to switch from truck to train.”
Unbalanced volumes from Spain
A slowdown in economic and industrial activity, particularly in Spain, causing an unexpected imbalance in volumes, was also a factor in Geodis’ decision, Vollet added. “We are ready to resume the service as soon as we have the necessary guarantees from the rail operator of more constant and better quality operating conditions for trains as well as the assurance of the return of substantial volumes of traffic, in both directions. “It’s an important route for us, ideal for intermodal traffic, given the long distance covered (well over 2,000 kilometers) and there is definitely growth potential there. We also have other prospective projects in mind from Łódź, to France in particular.”
Geodis and rail freight
As well as being a major provider of road haulage, Geodis has almost 120 trains in circulation every week operating across France and Europe. Domestic routes include Lille/Dourges-Avignon and Metz-Hendaye, each with five round trips weekly. Geodis also has a service dedicated to liquid bulk chemicals traffic operating several times weekly between Lavera, near Marseille to Puyoo, in south-west France, where Geodis has a ‘combi’ rail-road terminal.
On international routes, Geodis has a number of trains running between Łódź and Baltic Sea ports, transporting maritime traffic for import and export; a daily service between Noisy-le-Sec, in the Paris region and Novara, in Italy; as well as three round trips weekly between Łódź and Piacenza, also in Italy. “We’re also considering projects to link Łódź and Lille/Dourges and potentially a little further afield, to the UK while a number of our customers would welcome the launch of a service connecting the Atlantic-facing French-Spanish border and the Paris region and beyond to northern France.”
Vollet estimates that today Geodis generates around 80-85 million euros in turnover from its multimodal offering, rail being an integral part. “Back in 2022, we set ourselves a target of 150 million euros in turnover in the mid-term, roughly 10-12% of the global turnover of Geodis’ overland transport division. So we are a little bit behind our target at present. But as the suspension of the Łódź-Barcelona service illustrates, the market is going through yet another challenging phase.”