The European Commission (EC) has approved French State aid totalling 9.3 million euros to support the ongoing development of two multimodal freight terminals. One of them is at the port of Calais, near the English Channel and the other is at the Mediterranean port of Sète.

Calais and Sète will receive financial support of 6.3 million euros and 3 million euros respectively. The beneficiaries are CargoBeamer Terminal Calais, a company specialising in the transportation of non-cranable semi-trailers, and Sète Terminal Société Investissement, an SNCF group company specialising in passenger and freight rail transport, the EC explained.

It said the aid was being granted in accordance with Article 93 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which allows Member States to introduce aid measures to meet the needs of transport coordination. The Commission took the view that the aid is necessary to encourage the development of rail freight and modal shift and that it has an incentive effect since, without public aid, the beneficiaries would not make the investments in question.

CargoBeamer and VIIA

CargoBeamer opened its Calais terminal in the summer of 2021 by launching four weekly round trips between the Channel port and Perpignan, on the French-Spanish border. The company indicated at the time that the terminal had the capacity to handle up to six round trips by train daily while also noting that subsequent development would see this extended to 12 round trips per day.

VIIA, the rolling highway subsidiary of Rail Logistics Europe (RLE), which groups all of SNCF’s rail freight and logistics activities, won a tender in February 2022 to operate the Port of Sète’s new multi-modal terminal ahead of its scheduled opening at the beginning of last year. The total investment in the build-out of the Sète terminal is estimated at 20 million euros with the regional public authority of Occitanie and the port, which it owns, contributing almost 8.7 million euros, with VIIA is putting in €8 million.

In November 2023, VIIA, Danish ferry operator and logistics provider DFDS and the ports of Sète and Calais signed a Memorandum of Understanding to connect the Mediterranean with Northern Europe. The operational co-operation agreement aims to improve the flow and reliability of trade between Türkiye, the EU and the UK using both ferry and rail transport modes. It encompasses the transportation of goods on DFDS’ ferry services from the Turkish ports of Yalova and Izmir to Sète; a rail connection between Sète and Calais, operated by VIIA; and a ferry service from Calais to the port of Tilbury, in the UK, operated by DFDS.