{"id":417138,"date":"2026-04-29T16:52:50","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T06:52:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/?p=70855"},"modified":"2026-04-29T16:52:50","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T06:52:50","slug":"historic-moment-in-rail-freight-challengers-are-likely-bigger-than-incumbent-operators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=417138","title":{"rendered":"Historic moment in rail freight: challengers are likely bigger than incumbent operators"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Ever since 2017, the rail freight market share of new entrants has been growing. With each year that passes, the so-called challengers inch closer to outgrowing the incumbent operators. It seems that rail freight has now reached a turning point.<\/strong><br \/>\n<span id=\"more-70855\"><\/span>A market report by IRG-Rail reveals the latest market share data. These figures relate to 2024. The big takeaway for the rail freight industry: challengers continue to mount an assault on the role of the (domestic) incumbents.<\/p>\n<p>It is important to note that challengers include all companies that are competing with the incumbent operators, regardless of their ownership. This includes publicly owned foreign incumbents, for example. However, the message still stands. Private challengers are the success story of the last couple of years.<\/p>\n<p>Data collected by IRG-Rail underlines this. In 2024, private challengers took a market share of 41% across Europe. Incumbents held on to 42%, and foreign incumbents held 16% on average.<\/p>\n<p>Between 2020 and 2024, the market share of private challengers has grown by over a percentage point annually. By contrast, incumbents have lost around 2% each year. Assuming that this trend has continued since 2024, challengers would \u2014 collectively \u2014 now hold the largest market share across Europe.<\/p>\n<div class=\"flourish-embed flourish-chart\" data-src=\"story\/3661802\"><script src=\"https:\/\/public.flourish.studio\/resources\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/div>\n<h2>The European picture<\/h2>\n<p>The maps below offer a brief overview of the market shares of non-incumbents and domestic incumbents per country. In some of the smaller countries, domestic incumbents still reign. This is perhaps not surprising, since the rail freight industry is very limited in these places either way.<\/p>\n<p>Challengers are in a remarkably strong position in, for example, Estonia. Its only rail freight operator Operail seems to have been classified as a non-incumbent. Operators from neighbouring countries seem not to have been included in the data. It is unclear if this is an error or not. At the same time, the UK, Denmark, Romania and Portugal have high non-incumbent market shares.<\/p>\n<p>The latter no longer has a domestic incumbent. The Portuguese state-owned rail freight operator CP Carga was acquired by MSC in 2016 and rebranded as Medway.<\/p>\n<div class=\"flourish-embed flourish-chart\" data-src=\"story\/3661803\"><script src=\"https:\/\/public.flourish.studio\/resources\/embed.js\"><\/script><noscript><br data-mce-bogus=\"1\"><\/noscript><noscript><br data-mce-bogus=\"1\"><\/noscript><noscript><br data-mce-bogus=\"1\"><\/noscript><noscript><br data-mce-bogus=\"1\"><\/noscript><\/div>\n<div style=\"border: 2px solid #0a4e7f; padding: 15px 20px 20px 20px; border-radius: 10px; background-color: #e7f1f8; margin: 20px 0;\">\n<p>RailFreight.com wrote about<strong> the decline of DB Cargo&#8217;s market share in Germany<\/strong> earlier. Especially in Combined Transport, the German incumbent is far behind market challengers. Since the early 2000s, the rail freight market in Germany has gone through a major transformation.<\/p>\n<div class=\"flourish-embed flourish-chart\" data-src=\"visualisation\/28205571\"><script src=\"https:\/\/public.flourish.studio\/resources\/embed.js\"><\/script><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/public.flourish.studio\/visualisation\/28205571\/thumbnail\" width=\"100%\" alt=\"visualization\" \/><\/noscript><noscript><br data-mce-bogus=\"1\"><\/noscript><\/div>\n<aside class=\"readmore\">\n<div class=\"readmore-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/business\/2025\/12\/31\/data-of-the-week-successful-german-rail-freight-challengers-both-pose-and-face-challenges\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/shutterstock_2367596703-128x128.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"readmore-thumbnail\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"readmore-info\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/business\/2025\/12\/31\/data-of-the-week-successful-german-rail-freight-challengers-both-pose-and-face-challenges\/\" class=\"readmore-title\">Data of the week: German private operators gain ground despite severe network challenges<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ever since 2017, the rail freight market share of new entrants has been growing. With each year that passes, the so-called challengers inch closer to\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"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":[20172,17312,11313,20173,16422,471,78,47],"tags":[12634],"class_list":["post-417138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-challengers","category-data-of-the-week","category-in-depth","category-incumbents","category-irg-rail","category-news","category-rail-freight","category-rail-news","tag-railfreight"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417138","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\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=417138"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":417139,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417138\/revisions\/417139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=417138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=417138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=417138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}