Developing on the rails
Can the advantages offered by road haulage be outweighed by intermodal services? More than that, according to Tufan Khalaji, the director for intermodal services with Nunner Logistics, which links up China and Central Asia, amongst others. Tufan Khalaji earned his spurs with InterRail and the Rail Cargo Group. Christian Doepgen spoke to him, also in his role as managing director of Nunner in Switzerland, in Basel.
Mr Khalaji, how did you become the Nunner Group’s intermodal director?
I first worked for InterRail for ten years, also as manager in charge of services to and from China. Positions at Hellmann and the Rail Cargo Group then followed, and since April 2019 I’ve held this post, together with the job of managing director of Nunner in Switzerland.
The Nunner Logistics Group recently restructured its ownership, didn’t it?
That’s right. Our roots are Austrian, but we’ve been a part of Logwin since the year 2000. In 2019 Erwin Cootjans, who is our CEO and owner today, took over Nunner again and transferred our headquarters to Helmond (Netherlands). ING Corporate Investments has been a minority shareholder with a 25% stake since summer 2019.
Can you give us any performance figures?
Last year our 550 employees and 500 temporary workers, including drivers, generated sales of approximately EUR 200 million. Our 200 Emea and five Chinese locations focus on Eurasian traffic.
How are you positioned in Switzerland?
We collaborate with partners here. The Swiss market is actually very interesting for Nunner Logistics. We operated around 3,600 lorries (mainly groupage services) full of imports here in 2019, mainly for customers from the fields of high-tech, consumer and electronic goods and bike logistics. In the export segment we operated around 3,100 lorries for clients in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry in 2019. These figures don’t include any intermodal or rail solutions, where we also see a great potential to expand.
Where do you operate intermodally?
We’ve got an eye on the Wolfurt terminal, amongst others, to bundle railfreight operations from eastern Switzerland, Vorarlberg and southern Germany towards Poznan, our hub for traffic to and from the CIS. We’re set to operate two runs to and fro a week from October 2020.
Is Nunner preparing any more railfreight connections?
Yes. In May we’re launching an intermodal link from Amsterdam to Duisburg, offering two runs a week with our partner Samskip. We’ll focus on bundling consignments from the UK, Scandinavia and the Benelux countries and transporting them to Switzerland via Neuss, for example.
Haye you got any plans for Turkey?
Nunner is traditionally a specialist for Turkey. We’re planning a direct rail link between Turkey and Switzerland via Trieste and Melzo. We’ll deploy feu boxes with 33 pallet slots each.
Is Nunner set to expand in Switzerland?
We’re very satisfied with our current model; but, in order to complete our network, we’re aiming to establish a warehouse of our own in Basel in the medium term. Globally, Nunner Logistics operates warehousing space covering approximately 400,000 m².
