More goods on the railway tracks

Particularly in the last few months, we have seen the return of an often quoted slogan. The experience gained in 2018 involving an extreme shortage of drivers and loading space, new cost factors in the form of the lorry toll, ever stricter legal regulations and the rethinking of environmental policy are giving a new boost to railway transport throughout Europe.
What does this mean within the Wiegand-Glas corporate group?

Railway logistics is not an unknown quantity in our company. By December 2015 we had successfully completed block train concepts to Trier, Kehl and France. In spring 2016 constructional defects in the infrastructure led to the closure of the connection and the interruption of traffic. Since then, we have been 100 per cent reliant on road transport, both for raw materials, waste glass and finished products. In the last financial year, we handled around 115,000 incoming and outgoing loads for our group.

Focus on rail as a mode of transport

In order to effectively counteract our dependence on trucks and the expected additional volumes resulting from the expansion of production, we are once again turning to rail as a mode of transport. We're going in two directions here: first, the reactivation of the railway siding in Steinbach am Wald – with an implementation horizon of an incredible 3 to 5 years – and second, transport concepts that can be realised at short notice at an alternative location.

We are currently testing the freight station in Saalfeld to this end. From there we reach unloading terminals in Kehl, Ehrang and Hamburg with carriage groups. After repairing the siding in Steinbach am Wald, the carriage group concept can be seamlessly converted. In addition to testing the traffic concept, our main focus is on securing resources for the increasingly scarce rail capacity.