Transporeon and Austrian Federal Railways(ÖBB) have announced the new initiative in line with the EU target of doubling rail freight transport by 2050.

Transporeon, a Trimble company, provide a transportation management and logistics platform helping shippers, forwarders, carriers and retailers to move, manage and monitor freight.

Rail Cargo Group is a premier logistics company owned by Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB). It operates a freight cargo network across Europe and Asia.

Together, these companies won the Austrian Logistics Prize for 2024, awarded by the Austrian Logistics Network Association (VNL) on 5 June.

The new corridors enable freight customers to transfer their goods onto less CO2-intensive multimodal transport chains, where rail handles the long haul while trucks handle the first and final stages to and from the customer’s desired location.

With this initiative, Transporeon and Rail Cargo Group aim to make rail and multimodal transports as efficient and convenient as road-only transports.

The primary advantages of the companies’ new multimodal initiatives are :

• Increase tracking visibility from the use of telematics (the conversion of video imagery into data). Customers can visually track their shipments in real time throughout all stages of the journey, via the Transporeon platform.
• Transporeon’s technology offers a CO2 emissions calculation, in line with CountEmissionsEU. This assists customers with ongoing efforts to reduce their carbon footprint.

The Austrian Rail Cargo Group recently increased services on some of its most popular routes, from Germany and Austria to Italy, and from Belgium and Germany to Turkey.

Following a successful pilot programme, the two companies have increased their multimodal routes from three to the following eight.

Eurasia

• Belgium – Western Turkey
• North Rhine-Westphalia – Western Turkey
• Central Hungary – Western Turkey

Central Europe

• Lower Saxony – Veneto
• North Rhine-Westphalia – Veneto
• Eastern Austria and Hungary – Veneto

East West

• Central Serbia – North Rhine-Westphalia
• Western Romania – Belgium

In their keen efforts to reduce their carbon footprint, Nestlé Hungary is actively exploring the potential of this multimodal transport. 

Through our collaboration with Transporeon and RCG, we are exploring the potential of multimodal transport as a lower-emission solution. By leveraging their technology, we aim to fill vehicles and plan our journeys more efficiently, while making smarter choices that align with our emission reduction objectives. This is one part of our broader strategy to shift towards increased rail transport, which supports our emission reduction goals.

Zsolt Zahucki, DC manager for Nestlé Purina factory in Bük, Hungary