Bettina Castillo and Christoph Grasl have jointly taken responsibility for the work of the Executive Board at Rail Cargo Group (RCG) since early May. Both are aware of the current difficult economic and geopolitical environment, but also of the available room for rail freight operators to improve coordination, reliability and cross-border production.
A central element is RCG’s competitiveness programme Phoenix, which has already shown positive effects in the first quarter of this year, according to Grasl. This is a package of around 300 measures including the discontinuation of non-competitive products and the targeted increase of capacity utilisation on in-demand connections.
The importance of own traction
For the wider market, the more relevant point is RCG’s emphasis on international planning, shared systems, common standards and disruption management. The company also increasingly relies on its own traction to provide end-to-end international transport chains. It can provide traction in 14 of the 18 countries where it operates. “The big vision is that one day it should be as easy to move a train through Europe as it is to drive a truck. To achieve this, harmonised political regulation across Europe is key”, Castillo pointed out.
This is becoming more important as European rail freight faces major infrastructure restrictions. RCG points to construction works in Slovenia, including difficult access to the Port of Koper, a key gateway for Austrian industry, and new production concepts with Slovenian Railways. The company recently worked with Slovenian Railways on new production concepts to maintain service quality, Grasl explained.
International integration
Rail Cargo Group is also moving towards more integrated planning. It has brought the international Orient Corridor (RCG’s axis between southeastern Europe and Türkiye) into a shared transport planning system and wants to roll this out more widely next year, according to Castillo. “When it comes to implementing international planning and international disruption management, we can offer customers significantly better and higher-quality services if we have an overview of the entire chain and can influence it at any time”, she concluded. This measure has already been implemented across all RCG’s corridors.
