Rico Schavemaker, MD Schavemaker Logistics & Transport

Rail opportunities Holland – Poland!

“Today, carrying cargo between the Netherlands and Poland is definitely road haulage market related. The rates are very competitive on this trade. Despite the introduction of the LKW-Maut (levy of truck toll), rising fuel costs etc., there has not been such thing as a euro’s rise of Polish road haulage freight rates since 2004. The question is how long this will be going on. Road haulage will be faced with another LKW-Maut increase, fuel costs will continue rising in the next few years and it will become harder and harder to get Polish drivers attracted to international road haulage when prosperity in that country will continue growing.

That is why Schavemaker Logistics & Transport used the opportunity to buy its own rail terminal in south-western Poland  end 2007, being convinced that freight trains will achieve a bigger market share in the near future. The rail terminal acquired is closely situated at Wroclaw and a stone’s  throw away from the company’s truck branch, opened in 2004. Wroclaw and its region develop spectacularly. The region’s showpiece is the 180 hectare large factory park of the Korean-based LG.

The rail terminal is 5 hectares large. At the time the company bought it, it was outdated. It was, however, the destination of a weekly ERS container train service from Rotterdam. That service still exists, although it departs from Bremerhaven nowadays. New train services from the Netherlands are welcome at the site. It is still under refurbishment, but the construction works are expected to be finished mid 2009. Today it is the moment to position the terminal even further in the market.

Containers transportation is not the only activity of the company. On the contrary, I would like to say. Forty years ago, Schavemaker Logistics & Transport started as a genuine road haulier. Its leading customer was and still is the steel industry. Over the years the company has become a general logistic service provider.

The company will focus on serving the steel industry on the Poland rail terminal as well. As is, the terminal will get a 4,500 square metres large hall with two in-house railway tracks, which we will use for unloading, storage and distributing of big coils of steel for one of our customers. Today, these activities are done in the open air, but customers demand improved quality. Steel is from Chinese and Korean origin and is carried by train from the port of Koper in Slovenia throughout Europe to Poland.

Next to having discovered inland navigation as a mode of transport (holding a 50 percent share of Container Terminal Beverwijk) Schavemaker Logistics and Transport is part of the railway network as well, and not only in Poland. Closer to home the company expects the first train in the hall of its new trimodal terminal for steel products in Maastricht in 2009. Various steel manufacturers have steel coils cut according the customers’ specifications at Beatrixhaven in Maastricht. The company acts as supply chain manager under the name of Steel Logistics Europe. It arranges all required activities from supply until delivery, value added activities included. In 2006, the company started with the first of the series of terminals, a hall of 7,000 square metres included and an all weather facility for handling of barges.

This terminal appeared to be successful and an incentive to build a second hall of 12,000 square metres with a railway connection included, as not every steel factory is situated at water. That is not the case of buyers of the readymade product either, particularly not in Eastern-Europe. In such cases trains are excellent alternatives, which can save unnecessary kilometres via roads. The new build hall will have two 108 metres long railway tracks, which enables the company to handle steel products roofed-in. There is enough dwelling space for trains outside for other cargo that containers. In short, there is a public rail terminal on offer for use.

Poland and Maastricht: it will be hard to image the company’s services without railways in the near future.

Rico Schavemaker

MD Schavemaker Logistics & Transport

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