“METRANS is already part of the New Silk Road”

Interviewer: HHLA has been sole owner of Metrans since April 2018. It was announced that extensive investments are planned. What will be your top priority in the coming years?

Peter Kiss: I will start a little bit earlier. METRANS as part of the HHLA Group has been following an extensive investment plan for years. From the beginning, we have invested in building up our network, not just in terminals, but also in hardware. We started to invest in rail cars as early as 2004. The reason was very simple: There were not enough rail cars in the market to fulfill the requirements of the market. It was the same situation when we made the decision to invest in an own locomotive fleet.

The basic railway capacities all across Europe are not sufficient. There are declarations to increase the share of railway transportation, simply by transferring more cargo from road to rail. But the question is how to handle this extra volume. Do we have enough slots on the railway network? Do we have enough slots for the transports on terminals in Europe?

This is why we need an extensive investment plan. We need to make extensive investments in hinterland terminals, in rail cars and in locomotives to fulfill the requirements of our customers. And it is also very important to have a discussion with the political and professional stakeholders to achieve the goal of diverting road to rail.

As the world’s leading export nation, China is massively investing in several transport corridors and market opportunities as part of the “new silk road” project. One of those corridors is being promoted by the upgrade of the Trans-Asian railway capacities. In comparison to sea transport, railway transport accounts for only 2% of total freight volumes between China and Europe at the moment. What potential do you see in the next few years?

The world as we know it is changing. Ten to fifteen years ago we had no idea that the cargo flow from Far East to Central and Eastern Europe could be routed via the Adriatic Sea, five years ago we could not imagine that routing via Piraeus could be an option. The same is true for the ‘New Silk Road’ by railway.

METRANS is already part of the New Silk Road. Since we have started the integration of the Polish market and taken over Polzug to be part of METRANS, we are operating trains coming from China’s hinterland to Europe and back. We have partners using the Malaszewicze/Brest corridor and we are driving the trains to major European destinations and back.

The land bridge will grow in the coming years, we are sure. We will see what will be the economical result of this. At the moment the land solution is profiting from subventions which are supporting the growing phase. But I am sure that in the future the railway will remain one of the options to transport cargo on the corridor.

The development of capacities is another issue. At the moment, cargo is routed mainly via Malaszewicze and Brest. Sometimes we already see capacity issues. But we have found some options to optimize transportation by concentrating more on a hub solution. We have found very good partners in Malaszewicze supporting us and the plan is to go further with these optimizations. Last year we already successfully tested our own traction between Malaszewicze and our terminal in Poznan. This shows that our own resources allow us to operate faster and more effectively. We take our rail cars, our locomotives, our colleagues and we operate the train. My colleagues would say that it’s not so easy, which is true. My explanation is very simplifying.

With the recently announced cooperation with the Russian company ‘Transcontainer’, can we expect a strengthening of METRANS’ endeavors on Trans-Asian railway routes?

The cooperation with Transcontainer is very important to us. Not only in for transports to and from China, but also in regard to transportation to and from CIS countries. For years, Transcontainer and METRANS have had a very good cooperation, and now we would like expand it. We are searching together for further possibilities, further businesses where we can support each other in our home markets. This was the reason we strengthened our cooperation, sealed with a Memorandum, which was signed last year in Hamburg.

METRANS also operates hubs in Slovakia, a country that has a connection to the Russian broad gauge track system. Lately there have been considerations to extend those tracks more into the CEE region, to Bratislava or even the east of Austria. How would you rate these thoughts?

I do not expect that I will ever see a ‘wide gauge’ coming to Vienna, but there is already a solution that works: the terminal of Dobra, which is owned by Slovakia and operated by Transcontainer. This option should be expanded.

We see lot of potential in routing CIS transports and China transports via the Dobra terminal in Slovakia. This is another way, in addition to Malaszewicze, that the land solution of the New Silk Road can grow further. Of course, the political situation will need to stabilize.

cargo-partner recently expanded its storage capacities at the warehouse in Dunajska Streda, Slovakia, right next to your terminal, underlining the country’s importance for the company’s worldwide network. Recently Slovakia also announced its goal of becoming an important transit hub and declared that the railway network has sufficient unused capacity for the New Silk Road. Is METRANS planning to expand its Slovakian facilities and capacities in the near future?

The cooperation our companies have at the Dunajska Streda hub is a unique example showing how effective a combined solution can be. The direct connection of a terminal and a warehouse replaces last-mile trucking. This brings a lot of advantages.

Yes, Slovakia has announced its capacities. Unfortunately, the political situation has yet to become more stable. At the moment, transit through the Ukraine is problematic, but we are optimistic. This is why we are having intensive discussions with decision makers in Slovakia. We are discussing how to make this corridor become more important on the Silk Road, especially through the Dobra terminal in the eastern part of Slovakia. 

Thank you for the interview!