Ferries on wheels
DFDS adds a railfreight division to its portfolio. The topic isn’t entirely new for the Danish enterprise DFDS, but with the recent takeover of Prime Rail in Germany, the line is now taking transport by rail combined with classic ferry traffic to a new level.
The Danish shipping line DFDS is taking over the German intermodal operator Prime Rail, in order to establish its own railway unit on the basis of the entity. Prime Rail, which is headquartered in Troisdorf, near Cologne, offers pan-continental as well as maritime intermodal rail-road freight transport solutions.
The firm, founded in 2019, has cooperated closely with DFDS since 2020, having become the Danish logistics provider’s ‘Cologne intermodal transport centre of expertise’. The aim of this move is to offer clients integrated ferry and rail transport services, as Peder Gellert Pedersen, the executive vice-president and head of ferries at DFDS, explained. “This represents a big strategic step for us. Prime Rail is the perfect match, as we also connect our maritime gateways to inland terminals in the hinterlands by rail.”
The new rail unit will be added to the ‘DFDS Mediterranean Business Unit’, which will then include both the new and existing intermodal business. The unit will be led by Patrick Zilles, founder and CEO of Prime Rail, who’ll also become vice-president and head of railway activities. He’ll report to Lars Hoffmann, the head of DFDS Mediterranean Business Unit.
Hoffmann pointed out that “we’ve established the value that rail solutions give our model ever since we acquired our Turkish network in 2018. We’ve doubled our weekly rail departures since then.” So ferries and the railways are set to continue as complementary elements in future.