Some 30 million train/km per year, investments for around €500 million, and new companies abroad in the future of Italy’s biggest rail freight company.
The European rail freight sector has undergone an authentic revolution in the past few decades, with market liberalization, the radical changes of the globalized economy, the delocalization of production, and not least the challenge of environmental sustainability. A change that also Trenitalia Cargo, the freight division of the transport operator headed up by the FS Italiane Group, has faced by reinventing itself, struggling against the competition of a road haulage sector that is often unhampered by rules, and contending with numerous new and aggressive private rail companies. On the eve of an overall reorganization of the freight sector, we met with Ing. Mario Castaldo, director of Trenitalia’s Cargo Division, with whom we analyzed the present and the future of the Italian company, strongly projected towards Europe.
Ing. Castaldo, can you give us a picture of what Trenitalia Cargo is, first of all?
Today it’s a division of Trenitalia, the company of the Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane group that deals with transport activities. So we at Trenitalia Cargo concern ourselves with freight transport and the commercialization of freight services. Let me say right away, though, that in the industrial plan that is being mapped out, which takes account also of the foreseen privatization process of the FS Italiane Group, we are creating a structure that is broadened to the whole freight and logistics sector, which will be placed outside of Trenitalia and directly under the holding company. We have given ourselves the goal of the end of 2016, but probably already in the first half of the year we will create a newco that will take in the Trenitalia’s Cargo Division, FS Logistica with its subsidiaries, and the other companies that are headed up by Trenitalia but are functionally under the Cargo Division, which are TX Logistik and Trenitalia Logistic France. We want to be a structure that develops transport and logistics services at European level, maintaining its core business in rail haulage but integrating it with a set of services that are increasingly demanded by customers.
by Franco Tanel – Photo FS Italiane
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