Mercitalia Fast is the new “all freight” cargo service of the Mercitalia subsidiary (owned by Italian FS Group) carried out with an ETR 500 train and using the Italian high speed rail network.
The service will be operational from October 2018 on the Caserta – Bologna route and vice versa, from the Caserta Marcianise and Bologna Interporto terminals. Travel time is 3 hours 20 minutes at an average speed of 180 kilometers per hour, from origin to destination.
”In its first year of activity, Mercitalia – underlined Renato Mazzoncini, CEO of FS Italiane – has focused the economic and industrial results achieved, both in terms of investments made and as regards the objectives indicated in the 2017-2026 Business Plan. We have thus started the relaunch of the goods and logistics sector in Italy and abroad. The restructuring and reorganization of the Group’s industrial cargo and logistics industries – Mazzoncini continued – has generated lower operational superstructures and greater production efficiency. In the sector, then, we have planned EUR 1.5 billion to be invested in ten years. In a year we have already activated investments of EUR 500 million”.
”In the future we plan to extend the offer to other terminals in the main Italian cities crossed by the high speed rail network, cities as Turin, Novara, Milan, Brescia, Verona, Padua, Rome and Bari”, Marco Gosso, Chief Executive Officer of Mercitalia Logistics.
Freight will travel on board an ETR 500 (composed of 12 cars for a transport capacity equivalent to 18 mega-trucks or two Boeing 747 Cargo airplanes) specially equipped for the transport of roll containers (70x80x180 1m3 / 220 kg), easy and quick to load, download and stow. Thanks to Mercitalia Fast, the carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere compared to the road transport mode will be reduced by 80%.
In particular, the Mercitalia subsidiary is reaching the objectives indicated in the FS Italiane Group’s 2017-2026 Business Plan.Thus, it already allocated investments amounting to EUR 500 million out of a total of EUR 1.5 billion planned investments in ten years. For the first time in the history of the FS’s freight business, positive cash flows for of EUR 40 million were generated in 2017.
The investments, resumed after decades, and the activities started show the strong will of FS Italiane to relaunch the rail freight sector: from contracts for the supply of 125 new electric locomotives, 10 shunting locomotives and over 300 last generation rail freight cars for combined and conventional transport, to agreements signed for the development of logistics in Italy and abroad.
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