French logistics company GEFCO, a subsidiary of Russian Railways, is developing a new rail automotive logistics service in Morocco. The freight forwarder will organise a supply chain to transport cars by rail from a new plant of Groupe PSA in Kenitra to Tangier port. To achieve this goal, GEFCO already allocated two car transporter wagons from France to Morocco in December 2018, while 45 units will be delivered to the African country by the year’s end.

The car transport wagons will be operated by the Moroccan national railway company ONCF. The supply chain will be multimodal. First, the cars will be delivered from Kenitra to Tangier by train, then to European seaports by ship. Afterwards, they will be carried to the customers by trucks or trains. The freight volume of the supply chain will be correlated with the output of the production facility of Groupe PSA in Kenitra, which is to be launched soon. It will produce 100,000 vehicles this year and 200,00 units from 2020 onwards.

GEFCO rail solutions

GEFCO has a well-developed network of rail freight connections, mostly in Europe. They were organised in cooperation with such railway operators as Deutsche Bahn (including its subsidiaries), Russian Railways, Belarus Railway, etc. The company’s main railway hub is located at Gevrey station in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region, eastern France. The freight forwarder started to use it in 2011, when it established a strong partnership with Euro Cargo Rail, a French subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn.

In November 2017, GEFCO expanded its service to Asia by launching together with UTLC ERA the Wuhan-Dourges container train service. It became the first fully automotive block train between China and Europe. The trainset delivers auto parts from China to northern France via Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland and Germany.

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