Gruppo FS and MSC: agreement for an increasingly intermodal logistics

The keyword is intermodality. The FS Group and the MSC Group have signed an agreement to promote the synergy between maritime and rail transport, aiming for a logistics chain that is increasingly efficient, reliable, and sustainable. The Memorandum of Understanding for the FS Group was signed in Geneva by CEO Luigi Ferraris and Gianpiero Strisciuglio, CEO of Mercitalia Logistics, the parent company of the FS Group's Polo Logistica. Present for the MSC Group were Group Chairman Gianluigi Aponte and Giuseppe Prudente, Chief Logistics Officer of MSC and President of MEDLOG, MSC's logistics company.

 

The goal of the signed agreement is to establish a commercial and operational partnership between the two groups, aimed at the development of combined maritime transport. In particular, the main areas of the agreement include the management of inland and national European intermodal terminals, as well as the management of the train network and intermodal rail services. These services will also benefit from the shared use of specific equipment, such as locomotives and railcars. This will promote greater flexibility and quality of transport, operating both in the national and European markets, which the FS Group increasingly views as its new domestic market. Another area of potential cooperation is the participation in tenders.

 

The cooperation between the FS Group and the MSC Group has already taken the first steps in recent weeks, with the launch of a partnership in the port terminal of Gioia Tauro for handling services and rail transport between Gioia Tauro and the Interporto of Padova. For this traffic, an agreement is already in place to facilitate the transit of goods outside the EU and to carry out customs procedures directly at the destination terminal, in this case, Bologna.

“The signing of this MoU with an international partner like MSC,” emphasized Gianpiero Strisciuglio, CEO of Mercitalia Logistics of the FS Group, “strengthens the strategy of Polo Logistica of the FS Group as a system operator, consolidating its presence along the logistics value chain and placing rail transport at the center for distances over 300/400 km. It is indeed a goal of the FS Industrial Plan,” Strisciuglio concluded, “to double the current share of freight transported by rail within a decade, also thanks to increasingly effective connections between our ports and terminals to the national network and European rail corridors.”