Mercitalia and PKP Group: agreement for the development of rail freight traffic between Italy and Poland

Rome, 5 September 2018

To develop rail freight transport between Italy and Poland with new, increasingly reliable, and efficient services on the Baltic-Adriatic TEN-T Rail Corridor.

This is the main objective of the strategic alliance agreement signed today in Krynica, Poland, between Mercitalia Rail, a company of the Polo Mercitalia Group (FS Italiane Group), and Polish PKP Cargo (PKP Group). The signing took place during the 2018 Economic Forum.

In particular, in the coming months, a working group consisting of representatives of the two companies will declare the principles of cooperation so that innovative freight transport solutions can be designed as soon as possible to meet the growing needs of customers.

"This agreement is particularly important for the strategic positioning of Polo Mercitalia," said Gian Paolo Gotellli, CEO of Mercitalia Rail. "With the PKP Group we do not have operational overlaps and we will be able to collaborate intensively to develop new services on the Baltic-Adriatic Railway Corridor, both for intermodal traffic, with very high growth from and to the port of Trieste, as for conventional traffic. We will thus be able to interact with a strong partner not only in Poland, but also in the Czech Republic. Furthermore, thanks to access to intermodal and conventional terminals in Poland, we will also develop the transportation of goods by rail on the East-West route to CIS countries and to China, and we will make our operational facilities and services in Italy available to PKP ".

Polo Mercitalia is the largest Italian player in the European freight and logistics market. Mercitalia Rail is the largest Italian freight railway company and one of the largest in Europe.