Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG’s (HHLA) subsidiary Metrans is offering new rail connections between the Baltic Sea, Central Europe and Turkey.
The Port of Gdańsk, Poland, is now served by Metrans trains with new services to Ostrava.
In the far southeast, already a few kilometres into Asia, the Halkali Terminal close to Istanbul was connected with the Metrans Network.
The complete rail network is now stretching from Gdańsk, Hamburg, Bremerhaven, Wilhelmshaven and Rotterdam in northern Europe, to Koper, Trieste, Piraeus and Istanbul in the south.
The new connection with Turkey was made possible by a cooperation with the Turkish logistic provider Omsan Logistics. The first train with containers left the Metrans Hub Terminal Dunajska Streda (Slovakia) on 3 September in direction to Istanbul terminal Halkali. Two round trip weekly train connections are planned in the initial service rollout.
In Poland, Metrans is closing a missing link on its European network map with a connection to the Baltic Sea. From 5 September 2022, regular trains between the Czech Metrans terminal Ostrava and DCT container terminal in Gdańsk will commence.
READ: The largest port in Poland is the fastest growing European port of the last decade
Boxes on Metrans lines can cross Poland from the south to the north three times every week in each direction, with a stopover in Dabrowa Gornicza near Katowice.
Peter Kiss, CEO of Metrans-Group, commented: “The new relations fit well into the philosophy of our dynamic group. We are connecting an increasing number of ports with our strategically positioned hub terminals for the transhipment of containers across Europe.
“More relations mean a more attractive service for our customers, operationally as well as in terms of costs.“
The block trains between Gdańsk and Ostrava are optimised in length which can reach up to 750 metres; increasing capacity of a single train to 112 standard containers.
