Munich, 10 May 2017
Polo Mercitalia is looking to the European market to expand its business.
From December 2017, Polo Mercitalia will offer, through its TX Logistik Switzerland company, railway goods transport services between the Po Valley and Northern Europe (Belgium, France, Germany and Holland).
It is a new strategic approach with a double advantage. It makes effective use of the rail axes of the Rhine-Alps core European corridor, the Lötschberg tunnel and the new San Gotthard Base Tunnel (operational since December 2016). It also serves clients with a greater network of routes, making the best use of company assets and getting the most out of the investments programmed in the 2017-2026 Industrial Plan.
The Plan provides for 1.5 billion euros in investment. As well as a further billion for locomotives and carriages, 100 million for intermodal terminals (strengthening and developing the facilities at Milan, Brescia and Piacenza), 100 million for information technology and security and around 250 million to buy companies. Polo Mercitalia has already laid the ground for the first results. In February 2017 Mercitalia Rail and TX Logistik (together) started the process to acquire, over the next few years, up to 125 new electric locomotives (at a cost of 350 million euros), both for the European and Italian markets. Mercitalia Rail and Cemat, have also started the process of buying 250 new wagons for transporting steel products and mega semi trailers (worth over 20 million euros).
Polo Mercitalia was presented today in Munich by Renato Mazzoncini, Managing Director and Director General of FS Italiane and Marco Gosso, Managing Director and Director General of Mercitalia Logistics to the international logistics and freight community present at Transport Logistic, the most important trade fair in the sector.
“Polo Mercitalia’s market of reference”, stresses Marco Gosso, “is Europe: that is why we have the ambitious aim of serving clients only using our internal capacity. Starting from Italian terminals, the trains will reach Northern Europe with distinctly superior connections and speed, which is a break with the past and is in line with the Polo’s strategic and industrial aims. It is a commitment that, over the next ten years, will lead us to generate over half of our revenue from international business”.
The driving force of Polo Mercitalia’s European expansion will be the TX Logistik company, which is a subsidiary based in Germany, which over these past few months has been the focus of an important industrial transformation, and has had a completely new top management.
TX Logistik brings with it a developed network, as well as special knowledge of integrated railway logistics and the sector. The company has been in business for twenty years as a manager of rail transport and is perfectly equipped to manage the logistics chain at a European level.
“With us, it becomes possible to go down the most important corridors”, declares Mirko Pahl, Managing director of TX Logistik. “After a period of consolidation we have equipped ourselves with a new management team and we are again heading out on a long path of growth with ambitious aims: we want to grow in the short and medium term between new segments and corridors, and in the long term transfer greater amounts of traffic from road to rail. To achieve these goals, we have to make rail transport more attractive still for the long-term organisation of intelligent transport from a socio-economic and ecological perspective”.
TX Logistik backs this company philosophy with investments aimed at better managing quality, efficiency and costs, as well as with innovations aimed at helping access to rail transport.