Integrated logistics: FS Italiane presents the Mercitalia Hub

Milan, 20 ^th February 2017

Freight transport by rail and the logistics services of Gruppo FS Italiane are changing radically thanks to the Mercitalia Hub that looks like becoming the new running force of the freight transport and integrated logistics business in Italy.

The Hub is the only large assemblage of the Gruppo FS Italiane companies that operate in the freight transport and logistics business: the leader, the subholding company Mercitalia Logistics, Mercitalia Rail (largest Italian sector player with 500 mln € of yearly turnover), Gruppo TX Logistik (based in Germany but active in different European countries) Cemat (third European player), Mercitalia Transport & Services, Mercitalia Terminal, TerAlp (Terminal AlpTransit) and TLF.

The strategies and objectives of the Mercitalia Hub were illustrated today in Milan to Graziano Delrio, the Italian Minister of Infrastructures and Transports, by Renato Mazzoncini, CEO and General Manager of FS Italiane, and by Marco Gosso, CEO of Mercitalia Logistics.

Gioia Ghezzi and Ivan Soncini, presidents respectively of FS Italiane and Mercitalia Logistics, were also present.

The job of the Mercitalia Hub is to relaunch the freight business of Gruppo FS Italiane, developing integrated freight transport and logistics solutions that add value to railway use, with the aim of reaching, by 2018, the profit already made, and doubling the profits over ten years (from the billion invoiced in 2016 to more than 2 billion in 2026).

Grouping the companies into a single Hub will optimise services: clients can speak with a single interlocutor, with the resulting saving of time and resources.

In the 2017-2026 Industrial Plan, the Mercitalia Hub estimates making investments for 1.5 billion Euro: more than 1 billion for rolling stock, 100 million for intermodal terminals (new systems programmed for Milan, Brescia and Piacenza) in line with the Gotthard and the Reno-Alpi Core Corridor (Genoa-Rotterdam), 100 million for information technology & safety, and around 250 million for company acquisition in order to expand the business. It is the most important overall investment that Ferrovie Italiane has ever made in the sector.

Special attention will be given to re-launching international businesses which have their strong point in Tx Logistik, the German-based Hub company that is aiming at becoming the cost/quality leader of railway traction services, to and from Italy, in the large European Core Corridors of transalpine freight traffic.

The rolling stock has already started being renewed: Mercitalia Rail has signed two full maintenance hire contracts for 20 new electric locomotives. In addition, the procedure for purchasing up to 125 new electric locomotives over the next few years for the national and European markets will be started in a few days by Mercitalia Rail and TX Logistik together.