The Ukrainian industrial company Interpipe has established two routes for the delivery of its products by rail to reduce the risks posed by the blockade of the Ukrainian-Polish border.
Yevhen Anikin, head of the logistics and customs control department of Interpipe, stated this in an interview with the CFTS portal.
In the first option, the company's products are loaded onto a truck in Dnipro, which then travels to the town of Mostyska on the border with Poland. There, the truck is loaded onto a railway flatcar that is part of a freight train bound for the town of Forst in Germany. From Forst, a new truck takes the products to the end customer. If the shipment is not destined for Germany, the products are unloaded from the train at another location.
The alternative option is transportation of the products by rail to Chełm in Poland. A gondola car is loaded in Dnipro or Nikopol and unloaded in Chełm, where the products are sorted for different customers and then delivered by truck to the final destination. "Especially for the second option (shipment in gondola cars), we are conducting experiments to develop packaging that can withstand atmospheric precipitation and preserve the quality of pipes," Anikin said.
It should be noted that in the first option, the trucks are loaded onto railway flatcars at Container Terminal Mostyska. The terminal that handles the container trains in Germany is located in Forst and belongs to the Lion Group.
The Ukrainian terminal uses special flatcars and systems that allow it to load any type of semi-trailer. The transshipment is performed using two reach stackers equipped with special grippers known as combi-splitters. Currently, this is the only terminal in Ukraine from which piggyback (trailer on flatcar or TOFC) trains depart regularly.
