Rail Cargo Group (RCG) has launched a new railway service linking the German hub of Duisburg and Venice on the Adriatic coast of Italy. It entails a direct service, running three times per week between the ports. The service is called Transfer Duisburg-Venice.

Venice is an upcoming hub on the Adriatic coast, which in turn is becoming an important region for intermodal transport across Europe, with ports such as Koper and Trieste. Venice is considered to have huge potential and was recently ranked among the top ports of Italy. Thus, the Veneto region occupies a crucial position as a hub on the upper Italian Adriatic, argues RCG, a freight subsidiary of the Austrian ÖBB.

Adriatic hubs

“With the RCG, the port finds a reliable logistics partner to bring the increasing freight traffic to the environmentally friendly rail”, the company noted. For the southern ports of Trieste, Koper and Rijeka, RCG has been handling considerable volumes for years. In 2018 alone, 3,365 trains we handled by the company at the port of Trieste, and this number is growing this year.

“Now, the port of Venice also plays a central role in the international network of logistics professionals. The new direct train connects the strongly rising Adriatic port with the hub in Duisburg, which is a gateway for transport to and from Scandinavia. Thus RCG not only builds a bridge for combined traffic between Italy and Germany, but also shortens the transit times between northern Italy and the Ruhr area.”

To Greece and Turkey

In addition, the railway service connects to standard ferry services from the Port of Venice to Brindisi, Patras and Pendik, extending logistics services to Greece and strengthening them to Turkey.

“Customers from Scandinavia, too, benefit from a seamless connection to the international network of RCG. With the train product to Greece, Italy and Turkey, transfer connections to and from Scandinavia are offered with which forwarding agents can now reach the Scandinavian region directly and reliably on the environmentally friendly rail. One product thus links the entire northern European with the southern European region and ties it to the Asian part of Turkey”, RCG said.