French foodstuffs co-operative Maïsadour will launch around 15 trains operating over the coming weeks transporting grain shipments to a customer in Italy which produces starch. The new service follows the re-opening last month of a 12.5 kilometre-long rail freight line between Laluque and Tartas, in south-west France, after a hiatus of almost five years.
Having previously transported its product by road and ship, Maïsadour underlined that with an average cost of 0.05 euros to 0.10 euros per tonne-kilometre, rail freight is not only economical but also environmentally-friendly, emitting around about 14 grams of CO2 per tonne-kilometre, compared with 62 grams for road freight. The company went on to note that rail also contributes to reducing road congestion and wear and tear of highway surfaces, while offering transport capacity equivalent to 40 to 50 lorries per train.
Traction for the France-Italy service is provided by new entity, Hexafret, part of Rail Logistics Europe, the structure grouping SNCF’s rail freight subsidiaries, a spokesperson for Maïsadour told Railfreight.com. “Trains are loaded at the Maïsadour silo in Bégaar on Mondays and arrive at their destination in Italy between Wednesday and Thursday. The following Monday wagons return empty to France for most of the journey, to be loaded again at the Maïsadour silo.”
Scheduled to run until May
The trains, each carrying 1,200 tonnes of grain, take a route from Bégaar to Bordeaux and Toulouse, before skirting the Mediterranean coast and the French Riviera on their way to Italy. “The rail service is scheduled to run until the beginning of May. However, we are in discussions with starch producers in Northern Europe to potentially develop other flows after this date,” the spokesperson added. The re-opened Laluque and Tartas rail line has the capacity to handle 200,000 tonnes of traffic a year. Apart from Maïsadour, it is set to be used by the Ryam bio-refinery and the future multimodal platform at nearby Laluque.
