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Current, The Company, Press Release
Kombiverkehr shareholders' meeting: Record result in international transport
06/30/2016
  • 978,095 truckloads transported and sales of 446.6 million euros in the 2015 financial year
  • Volumes up on all four international transport axes
  • National transport still under pressure
  • RBH Logistics GmbH takes over traction on selected routes
  • Improvement in general conditions desperately needed for the railways
  • Modified online booking successfully launched


(Frankfurt/Main, 29 June 2016)
In spite of a difficult economic climate, Frankfurt-based Kombiverkehr KG, Europe's leading provider of intermodal transport services, ended the 2015 financial year with the biggest growth in consignments of the last five years. The company shifted a total of 978,095 truckloads or 1.96 million TEU in Europe's biggest intermodal network – a rise of more than 53,000 consignments, or 5.8 per cent. "The gain in consignments on all four international transport axes over the past year underlines our claim to be Europe's number one operator with the densest transport network and stable partnerships," managing director Robert Breuhahn told partners from the forwarding and logistics industry who attended the shareholders' meeting in Frankfurt am Main. The company's 147 employees achieved sales of 446.6 million euros (+3.0 per cent).

Protracted strikes by train drivers in Germany, the low overall cost of road haulage just as the cost of using the railways is rising and the inadequate quality of service in the rail transport sector have all affected the activities of Kombiverkehr KG throughout the year, especially in the domestic market. As a consequence, the volume of national transport fell slightly last year by 1.0 per cent to 201,703 truckloads (one consignment corresponds to the capacity of a goods vehicle) or 403,400 TEU (twenty-foot equivalent unit). However, Kombiverkehr more than made up for this by achieving a record result in international transport. The operator had recorded 776,392 transported containers, swap bodies and trailers or 1.56 million TEU in bilateral transport between Germany and 28 European countries by the end of the year. This is a significant increase of 7.7 per cent and, at the same time, the highest volume ever achieved in the company's history in this market segment, which is growing ever faster and ever stronger.

Transport output and distance continue to rise

The quantity of goods carried on Kombiverkehr's trains rose by 5.5 per cent to 22.7 million gross tonnes. An even more substantial increase was chalked up for transport output, which improved by 7.6 per cent to around 18.3 billion tonne kilometres. On average, freight forwarding customers shifted nearly 4,000 consignments per day of transport in the form of containers, swap bodies and semitrailers from lorries and ships onto the railways over a distance of more than 800 kilometres, thus making a vital contribution to national and European environmental targets. The railway cuts harmful carbon dioxide by two thirds compared with end-to-end road transport, so emissions fell by around 1.1 million tonnes of CO2 in 2015 as a result of transporting shipments in the Kombiverkehr network.

National transport still affected by opposing cost movements

The national area of business was also particularly hard hit by a strike, bad weather and their consequences in the 2015 financial year. Storm Niklas caused trains to be cancelled all over Germany for a number of days at the end of March/beginning of April, as did the strike by the GDL train drivers' union, which was held in three stages from mid-April to mid-May. The GDL strike action alone lasted over ten days in total and had a severe and lasting impact on rail-dependent national transport services for freight forwarding customers, which was ultimately reflected in the volume of consignments shifted by Kombiverkehr. When the pay dispute was at its height in May 2015, Kombiverkehr lost nearly 20 per cent of its consignment volume on national routes compared with the same month the previous year.

The pressure intensified on transport within Germany, where Kombiverkehr connects economic centres with over 65 overnight intermodal services between 21 terminals on a daily basis. This was down to a series of external factors: increased staffing costs and price hikes in energy and infrastructure costs on the one hand, and low diesel prices, stronger competition from the increase in cabotage operations by foreign carriers and spare transport capacity on the other. The upshot was that costs were running counter to one another in the rail and road transport sectors, which placed a burden on Combined Transport in Germany. "With over 200,000 consignments shifted on the German railway network, national Combined Transport nevertheless remains a vital cornerstone of our network," says the managing director.

Growth in transalpine traffic on all lines

With a total of 413,936 consignments (827,900 TEU), transalpine transport continues to be Kombiverkehr's busiest axis. During the 2015 financial year, 2.2 per cent more consignments were handled on the Germany – Switzerland / Italy corridor, which has 232 direct train services a week. The volume of transport with Italy is distributed across three different lines. With 221,664 transported consignments (+3.9 per cent), the Brenner route was again by far the most important service during the last financial year, followed by the Gotthard/Lötschberg route with 127,746 consignments (+0.6 per cent) and the increasingly important Tauern line with 49,959 consignments (+3.4 per cent).

In response to increasing demand for climate-friendly transport options through the highly sensitive alpine region, Kombiverkehr expanded capacity on both the Brenner and Gotthard routes during the 2015 financial year. Together with its Italian partner CEMAT, it launched two additional weekly departures in each direction on the route between Köln-Eifeltor and Verona Quadrante Europa in September 2015. This means that up to four trains now operate in each direction on this "racetrack" every day. Kombiverkehr works with the Swiss company HUPAC to provide services on the Gotthard, where the frequency of departures on the route between Duisburg and Busto Arsizio was increased from six to eight a week in each direction in February 2016.

Kombiverkehr uses the Tauern link to handle shipments to and from Greece and Turkey. The commencement of transport services at a new ferry port in northern Italy was a focal point of the company's activities during the 2015 financial year. A change in the timetable meant that it was no longer possible to deliver intermodal transport units to the port of Trieste in time for transfer onto the ferry bound for Patras in Greece. After a few trial runs with trains via Bologna, a sustainable solution was ultimately implemented through Fusina in the Port of Venice. The direct trains currently operate in a shuttle system between Venice and Frankfurt am Main twice a week in each direction. Kombiverkehr added another major ferry link from Trieste to its range of services between Germany and Turkey during the current financial year. The Port of Ambarli now provides the company's customers with another maritime link to the European side of Turkey. The focus was previously on the ports in the Asian part. Newly generated capacity on the Mediterranean route will increase the volume of consignments on the Tauern line in the long term.

Seaport hinterland traffic and Spanish transport drive west European transport forward

West European transport at Kombiverkehr again managed to increase in the 2015 financial year, thus underpinning its position as the second-busiest international transport axis. Bilateral Combined Transport between Germany and the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Spain was up by a total of 8 per cent: 149,687 consignments or around 300,000 TEU were recorded by the end of the financial year. German-Dutch seaport hinterland transport increased for the tenth time in succession, and traffic with Spain for the third time. With a significant gain of 14.4 per cent, a total of 80,812 maritime containers (161,600 TEU) were transported by block trains between the Rotterdam Delta terminal and Euromax as well as, for the first time, the APM terminal on the new Maasvlakte 2 on the one hand and Duisburg, Dortmund and Neuss on the other. Volumes in the key market segment with Spain also rose by 8.0 per cent. 51,757 consignments (103,500 TEU) was the best result ever achieved by Kombiverkehr on routes which include services to and from Irún, Madrid and Barcelona and are operated in partnership with the Spanish firm Comiberia. The above-average gains in both corridors compensated for the drop in the volume of consignments in the corridor between Germany and France as a result of construction work. These shipments are handled in partnership with the French operator Novatrans.

New production concepts and partnerships in east and southeast European transport

Following a slight loss in the preceding year, the volume of traffic to and from east and southeast Europe was increased by 11.8 per cent in 2015. Kombiverkehr shipped a total of 109,205 consignments, which equates to a volume of 218,400 TEU. Individual services in these countries varied widely in terms of progress, however. Whereas demand in the corridors with Slovenia and Hungary dwindled slightly, forwarding volumes in traffic with Austria, Poland and the Czech Republic were up quite substantially. These pleasing developments are based on new production concepts on these routes. Truck consignments were shifted from the roads to the railways in the wake of an improvement in the average punctuality rate, which is mainly attributable to better control within close range and end-to-end international transport control. Kombiverkehr and two partner companies took steps to combine the train products in Polish transport at the beginning of 2016. This move has also had a positive impact, with the companies still running their own transport services to and from Poland. This cooperation between intermodal providers means that freight forwarders can now benefit from four weekly train departures between the Ruhr district and Kutno in Poland. Kombiverkehr was able to boost the volume of consignments in end-to-end Turkish transport to its current level of 4,810 truckloads, a double-digit increase of 12.5 per cent.

Fixed link and Baltic Sea ports on course for success

The end-to-end rail product via the Öresund Bridge between Copenhagen and Malmö is enjoying increasing popularity among forwarders. Kombiverkehr thus offers an alternative route to the established ferry services via the Baltic Sea ports between central Europe and Scandinavia. There was a noticeable increase in demand for these services in 2015, with over 12,100 truckloads transported: an all-time high was achieved with a total available capacity of 38 block trains a week. Malmö, Helsingborg, Göteborg and Stockholm are some of the places that can now be reached several times a week from Köln-Eifeltor, Coevorden, Bad Bentheim, Herne and Lübeck via the Öresund Bridge.

The upward trend was repeated on the multimodal train services to and from the German Baltic Sea ports of Kiel, Rostock and Lübeck with direct connections to Scandinavia and the Baltic region, where extra capacity was provided to cope with increasing demand over the course of the 2015 financial year. The new direct train operated between Malmö and Stockholm by our partner Green Cargo had a positive effect on the total volume of consignments. Since September of last year, it has allowed end-to-end transport to be handled within Sweden and duly coordinated with the ferry times. Over the past financial year, Kombiverkehr shifted 103,565 containers, swap bodies and trailers, or 207,100 TEU, in northern European transport, thus achieving an increase of 29.6 per cent.

Alternative traction as a solution to sustained quality of service

Having joined forces to find a solution to the fact that the quality of service on the railways has failed to meet requirements for some considerable time, Kombiverkehr and Deutsche Bahn awarded the contract for traction to a different company. RBH Logistics GmbH, a provider of railway logistics services and a subsidiary of DB Cargo AG, has been providing the traction for selected existing services since February 2015. The company began in February 2015 with the aim of providing a sustained and plannable quality of service, initially on a few routes to eastern Europe, most notably Poland and the Czech Republic. The services on which RHB has assumed responsibility for the main traction have gradually been increased to 18 over the past year. RBH now provides traction, for example, for shipments from Wuppertal to various terminals in Italy and from Duisburg to the German Baltic Sea ports of Lübeck and Rostock. Trains are also driven by RBH from Hamburg-Billwerder to Neuss-Hessentor in the national de.NETdirekt+ network. "The figures demonstrate that switching some shipments to RBH Logistics GmbH, which has been ongoing for a year now, is having a positive effect. The quality of services had improved after only a few months, from 56 per cent in October 2014 to 90 per cent in July 2015 on the route to the Czech Republic for example," managing director Armin Riedl reported to the partners.

Improvement in general conditions desperately needed for the railways

The cost gap between road and rail continued to widen in the 2015 financial year. Several reports have now provided evidence of an above-average rise in the burden of costs on the service providers of operators – essentially the railways and wagon controllers. This includes wagon controllers' outlay on efficient noise reduction, which certainly makes sense in terms of society's growing acceptance of rail freight transport. Further costs for the railways arise from the uncoordinated introduction of the ETCS train safety system with its respective country-specific versions, and the additional energy levy imposed by the Renewable Energy Law (EEG) on the railway, a mode of freight transport with low CO2 emissions. In contrast, road haulage is enjoying a far more favourable climate, primarily as a result of the unexpected and protracted fall in the price of diesel and the reduction in road tolls in individual European states. "It is true that funding for the maintenance of the rail network has increased, but nothing has been done as yet to address the underlying problem of the rising costs imposed on rail freight transport companies. The consequences of this policy are gradually becoming clear, with the number of companies operating in the red in the railway sector on the up. This is no way to shift freight onto the environmentally friendly railways in the long term," stresses Riedl. The managing director is keeping an eye on transport policy in Brussels and calling for the regulations on Combined Transport to be harmonised once and for all in order to create legal certainty for users throughout Europe.

Modified online booking successfully launched

Kombiverkehr gave the go-ahead in mid-2015 for the introduction of a new booking application, which replaced the previous booking methods of fax and email in April 2016. The web-based modified online booking system makes it easier to book intermodal transport units in Kombiverkehr's European network, and it can also be seen as a useful addition to the existing B2B booking via an XML interface. More than 150,000 orders have been booked online with Kombiverkehr since the new application was launched.

Kombiverkehr, press photo, free for reproduction

Record result in international transport

With over 776,000 containers, swap bodies and trailers, international transport had accounted for a large share of nearly one million consignments transported in 2015. A record result in the history of Frankfurt-based Kombiverkehr KG.


Please download the press photo here.



About Kombiverkehr:
Founded in 1969, as Europe’s number 1 operator in intermodal transport Kombiverkehr Deutsche Gesellschaft für kombinierten Güterverkehr mbH & Co KG develops, organises and markets an international rail network that offers forwarders and transport companies an intelligent combination of the advantages of road, rail and ship. Kombiverkehr provides over 170 train departures with more than 15,000 connections for the cost-effective, secure and environmentally friendly transport of freight across Europe every night. The limited partnership is owned by some 230 national and international forwarders and transport companies as well as DB Mobility Logistics AG. Headquartered in Frankfurt am Main, the company shifted a total of 978,095 million truck consignments (1.96 million TEU) from road to rail in 2015, saving the environment almost one million tonnes of harmful carbon dioxide emissions. In 2015 the 147 full-time equivalent staff achieved sales of 446.6 million euros.

Contact for more information and picture material:
Kombiverkehr, Corporate Communications & Sales Support Manager, Jan Weiser
Phone +49 69/7 95 05-1 42, Fax +49 69/7 95 05-1 49
e-mail jweiser@kombiverkehr.de