{"id":385501,"date":"2026-03-12T19:16:43","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T09:16:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/?p=69937"},"modified":"2026-03-12T19:16:43","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T09:16:43","slug":"sbb-cargo-continues-to-bleed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=385501","title":{"rendered":"SBB Cargo continues to bleed"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a year of restructuring, terminal closures, layoffs and infrastructure works, SBB Cargo had a complicated 2025. This was also reflected in the company\u2019s annual report, which showed losses spiking and volumes decreasing in what now seems to be a trend even in one of Europe\u2019s rail freight powerhouses: Switzerland.<\/strong>
\n<\/span>SBB Cargo lost 122 million CHF (135,1 million euros) in 2025, compared to 76 million CHF (84,1 million euros) in 2024, a -60.4% difference. The higher loss is due to the depreciation of assets, namely \u201cobsolete mainline locomotives and freight wagons\u201d, the company explained on LinkedIn, \u201cwithout this effect, the deficit would be at the previous year’s level\u201d.<\/p>\n

There is also a staggering difference between SBB Cargo\u2019s domestic and international services. In Switzerland, the operator\u2019s volumes have been declining since 2019 and are now below five billion net tonnes\/kilometre for the third year in a row, with a 2.9% decrease between 2024 and 2025. SBB Cargo International has also seen its volumes decline since 2021, with a 4.6% drop between 2024 and 2025, but it is steadily above 10 billion net tonnes\/kilometre.<\/p>\n

\u2018Only block trains cover their own costs\u2019<\/h2>\n

Out of the three offer types in SBB Cargo\u2019s portfolio \u2013 combined transport, single wagonload and block trains, \u201conly the latter can cover its own costs\u201d, SBB underlined. The combined transport (CT) segment begun its transformation in May, while SWL will be re-organised this year. The transformation of CT has not been the smoothest, as it brought the closure of eight terminals<\/a> across Switzerland with the consequent loss of dozens of jobs.<\/p>\n

While waiting for the renovation of the SWL business, 2025 brought some positive news. The Swiss government approved a four-year scheme for financial support to operators offering SWL services in Switzerland both with compensation and investments. In total, 260 million CHF (287 million euros) will be deployed until 2029<\/a> for this initiative and, since SBB Cargo is the sole provider of this services, it will get all of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a year of restructuring, terminal closures, layoffs and infrastructure works, SBB Cargo had a complicated 2025. This was also reflected in the company\u2019s annual\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[72,471,47,6313,350],"tags":[12634],"class_list":["post-385501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-news","category-rail-news","category-sbb-cargo","category-switzerland","tag-railfreight"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=385501"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":385502,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385501\/revisions\/385502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=385501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=385501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=385501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}