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Smiles all round as CargoBeamer opens Calais terminal

[ July 19, 2021   //   Chris ]

German multimodal specialist CargoBeamer has opened its new terminal in Calais with a four round-trips a week service to and from Perpignan in southern France. Another route between Calais and Domodossola in Northern Italy will be launched later this year, it says.

Services are operated by DB Cargo’s French arm, Euro Cargo Rail. Cargobeamer’s patented technology for semi-trailers move trailers on and off flatbed rail wagons using horizontal shifting technology. As well as offering quick loading and unloading – 20 minutes for an entire train – it avoids the need to use specially strengthened road trailers as no lifting is involved.

Each train offers a total of 36 trailers, which consist of 24 special CargoBeamer-railcars and six usual double pocket wagons.

The Calais terminal can handled up to six trains a day, totalling 432 trailers for every day. A second stage is scheduled for 2023 and will double the terminals capacity to 12 daily train pairs.

CargoBeamer chief executive and founder, Hans-Jürgen Weidemann, said: “We view our Calais site as the starting point and an important cornerstone of a Europe-spanning network of terminals and routes, forming an increasing number of connections towards Southern, Central and Eastern Europe by rail. Meanwhile the location of Calais promises a lot of potential with its maritime connections and the Channel Tunnel towards Britain. We are going to expand CargoBeamers route network continuously in the upcoming years and thus shift more semi-trailers from congested roads onto environmentally friendly rail.”

CargoBeamer has since 2015 operated a daily intermodal service between Kaldenkirchen on the German/Dutch border and Domodossola in northern Italy and in mid-2021 CargoBeamer launched a three times a week service between Duisburg and Poznan.