Cereals industry body Intercéréales recently signed a five-year agreement with France’s rail infrastructure manager SNCF Réseau which puts the emphasis on information sharing to further develop rail freight. The French cereals industry is tasked with transporting, storing and delivering of 1.6 million trucks, 4,200 block trains and 2,300 barges of grain marketed in the country every year.
While the vast majority of this traffic in France is carried out by road haulage, the industry is nevertheless a major user of rail with a modal share estimated at 17 per cent in terms of tonnes-kilometres transported. A typical train convoy has the capacity of 45 trucks carrying grain shipments.
High-volume capacity trains, operating over relatively long distances, are viewed as being well-suited to the transport of grain to seaports and processing plants located in France and a competitive lever for exports. Dedicated French ports served by rail include Dunkirk, in the north, Rouen, in Normandy, Atlantic-facing La Rochelle and Sète on the Mediterranean coast.
The partnership in detail
Highlighting the significance of the partnership agreement, in an interview with Railfreight.com, Benoît Piétrement, the president of Intercéréales, said its main aim was to make rail freight more competitive. This would be based on several factors including the cost of renovation per kilometre, volumes on the track, the reduction in the number of kilometres to be maintained and better control of service quality.
“The entire cereals industry is committed to adhering to a decarbonisation roadmap and rail transport is a key element in achieving this. We are already one of the major users of rail freight in France and we are convinced of the need to go even further. This partnership will enable us to share information that is essential to rail freight planning in our supply chain and its development.”
Asked to provide a few examples of the information sharing that could take place between Intercéréales and SNCF Réseau, Piétrement noted: “Firstly, there is scope for dialogue when it comes to infrastructure issues with SNCF Réseau communicating on the state of the rail network and from Intercéréales side, input on grain silos equipped with rail spurs. There is also scope to discuss the investment outlook and share our respective plans in order to achieve some coherence in this area.”
Higher focus on capillary lines
As to sharing operational information, he said this could include data on current and potential traffic of the cereals industry and also that of other sectors if necessary, in order to increase volumes on capillary lines. “Moreover, on the regulatory front, we could explore with SNCF Réseau ways of increasing the number of trains per day on single-track capillary lines while maintaining the required level of safety. Operating constraints related to train paths and traffic circulation, limiting capacity on major routes, could also be a point of discussion, along with possible solutions.”
A large number of companies in the cereals industry are connected to the rail network via capillary or secondary lines which globally in France are set to benefit from state and EU investment funding totalling 700 million euros over the next decade within the framework of 4 billion euro rail freight spending programme named Ulysse Fret SNCF Réseau invested 70 million euros last year in work on capillary lines compared with 30 million euros in 2021.
Performance indicators data
Turning to the sharing of performance indicators, Piétrement explained that although these had yet to finalised, they will focus primarily on quality of service with data, for example, on the number of cancelled or delayed trains and part-loads. “Depending on the data available and how we can make use of it, these indicators will then be refined at the end of the first year of testing in the Centre-Val de Loire, region in centre-west France.”
According to the chairman and CEO of SNCF Réseau, Matthieu Chabanel, the partnership agreement with Intercéréales showed the commitment on the part of the two parties to develop sustainable, high-performance logistics for the cereals industry, through greater use of rail transport. “With this type of initiative, we’re working to both decarbonise the agricultural sector and to make it more competitive”, he added.
