Porsche to use rail transport for Finnish deliveries
German rail and logistics giant Deutsche Bahn said Tuesday that compatriot car manufacturer Porsche is switching from road to rail deliveries of its moving components to Finnish production partner Valmet Automotive.
Deutsche Bahn-subsidiary Railion has helped develop container wagons with mega trailers that can be towed by trucks as well as transported by rail. The trailers, mostly containing engines for Porsche’s Boxster and Cayman models, will be loaded at the car company’s plant in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen and at its suppliers in the south of Germany, before being driven to the truck container terminal in Kornwestheim and then transported to the Baltic Sea port of Rostock by Deutsche Bahn. From there, the mega trailers will be shipped to the Finnish seaport of Uusikaupunki, before covering the final leg of their journey to Valmet by road.
“By making a commitment to rail transport, we hope to move in a more environmentally friendly direction,” said Michael Macht, Porsche’s executive vice president for production and logistics. “Thanks to our close cooperation with Deutsche Bahn, we are already avoiding around 15,000 truck transports per year, which adds to a distance of almost 20 million kilometers. With the component transports to Valmet that we are starting now, we can save almost a further 7,000 truck transports or five million road kilometers per year.
“By itself, the German road network is no longer going to be able to cope with the forecast growth in transport volumes. It is for precisely this reason that industry has to transport goods by rail wherever possible,” Macht added.
