VIIA to operate rail freight terminal serving Paris’ biggest wholesale market

VIIA, a subsidiary of the French railway holding SNCF, won the concession for the future rail freight terminal which will serve the Rungis International Market in Paris, one of the largest wholesale markets in the world. The new terminal is scheduled to open in 2026, representing an investment of 36 million euros, supported by the French government.

The tender was awarded to VIIA by Semmaris, the public sector company running the Rungis International Market. Semmaris’ CEO, Stéphane Layani, said that VIIA had presented a project, based on a viable economic model, new links and the combination of two technologies: rail motorway and combined and combined vertical loading.

The project makes provision for six round-trip trains a day to operate from the terminal by 2030 with annual traffic of 120,000 containers a year. When first announced in 2022, there were plans to launch three daily rail freight services from the new terminal: Barcelona-Rungis-Antwerp-Rotterdam, Avignon-Dunkerque-Rungis and Dunkerque-Rungis.

No trains to the market until 2026

Until now, Rungis has been served by the so-called train des primeurs, carrying fresh fruit and vegetables from Perpignan, in southwest France, to Paris. The service has now been discontinued. It is one of more than 20 traffic routes relinquished by Fret SNCF within the framework of an agreement between France and the European Commission over suspicions that the rail freight operator benefited from illegal state aid.

The seasonal service ran five days weekly between October and June and will not resume until work on the new rail terminal is completed in 2026. “The new terminal will provide huge potential for modal shift: almost 60,000 lorries a year will be kept off the roads, representing a reduction of 25,000 tonnes of CO2 every year”, Layani added.

Also read:

• French Senate grills SNCF Réseau chief on state of rail freight
• Collaborative parcel delivery service WePost eyes 200,000 rail-borne parcels this year
• Geodis launches one of Europe’s longest rail freight connections