SNCF Geodis chief blasts shippers over single-wagon claims

SNCF Geodis boss Pierre Blayau has slammed French shipper groups that claim their supply chains will be severely impacted by Fret SNCF's major cutback in its single-wagon services and increased rates.

"This is a shocking attitude for shippers to take and it implies that SNCF is not a business, that rail transport is not a commercial activity and that our group is obliged to put a [single-wagon] service on the market at half-price," said Mr Blayau.

"What this amounts is that we subsidise the logistics costs of big firms. It's totally unacceptable," he said.

In a joint statement, around 10 shipper federations, including the CCFA (automotive), FFA (steel) and UIC (chemicals), as well as transport and logistics trade body, the TLF, attacked the single-wagon strategy, saying it would "lead to the massive transfer of rail freight traffic to road, calling into question the recovery of Fret SNCF."

Earlier this year, state-controlled operator Fret SNCF unveiled plans to reduce its single-wagon network by two-thirds over the next two years, after it contributed 70 per cent of the rail freight unit's losses of more than EUR500 million (US$630 million) in 2009.

The cuts focus on scaling-down operations to a break-even point identified at 200,000 single-wagon units, down from around 600,000 currently.

A report by London's International Freighting Weekly highlighted that just 18 months ago Fret SNCF's former chief, Luc Nadal, who left the company earlier this year, presented a "new-generation" service, named Swing, which made provision for reducing capacity to 600,000 wagons annually, but also emphasised the need to forge partnerships with shippers who committed regular volumes of traffic. Swing also incorporated a European dimension via Xrail.
(Source:www.schednet.com)