The Boden Industrial Park (BIP), not far from the Swedish border with Finland, will get a rail link to the Malmbanan, Sweden’s busiest rail freight route. The plan is to use the new connection to accommodate the future world’s largest hydrogen plant, which will be operated by H2 Green Steel. However, the current state of the Malmbanan already poses significant capacity obstacles, and absorbing additional volumes before a significant upgrade is carried out might be problematic.

The new rail link connecting the BIP to the Malmbanan, also known as the Iron Ore Line, will be built and managed by Polar Structure and will be financed by Niam Infrastructure. H2 Green Steel wants to use it to supply its future facility with iron ore from LKAB, which has sites all along the Iron Ore Line. This would mean increasing volumes on an already overcongested line. The main issue is that H2 Green Steel is supposed to commence operations in 2025, while the announced upgrades for the Malmbanan will start in 2025 or 2026 in the best case scenario.

LKAB has already closed one facility

The lack of available rail capacity along the Malmbanan has already forced LKAB to halt production at the Konsuln production mine. Despite not affecting LKAB’s employees directly, this drastic measure caused a few deals with contractors to be cancelled, costing roughly 60 people their jobs. To create more capacity along the Iron Ore Line, the mining giant claimed to be ready to purchase buses to transfer passengers from the rail to the road in specific sections of the railway.

Some positive developments seem to have surfaced since Sweden joined NATO in March this year as a consequence of the war in Ukraine. A couple of weeks after this, the Swedish government decided to speed up the upgrade of the Malmbanan, as the line needs to be functional at all times for mining and military purposes. Currently, the Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket) is working on prioritising and preparing the upgrades along the Iron Ore Line. Most of them should focus on facilitating the traffic of trains with an axle load of 32,5 tonnes compared to the current 30.

Also read:

• Yet another derailment on the Iron Ore Line
• Despite sufficient capacity, Sweden and Denmark eye Öresund rail expansion
• Sweden upgrades Iron Ore Line, possibly raises TACs for funding