Italy wants to use rail to create hubs for Ukraine in the Adriatic

Italy’s northeast is seeking to become a logistics hub for Ukraine, which is facing a blockade of transport across the Black Sea. The facilities involved in this initiative are the ports of Trieste and Venice, as well as intermodal terminals in Padua and Verona. This is reported by Railway Supply magazine with reference to RailFreight.

Goods to and from Ukraine will be delivered to Italy via the rail corridor Baltica-Adriatica TEN-T. In other words, it is planned to redirect the flow of goods from the Black Sea, now closed due to the war, to the Adriatic. The plan for the Baltic-Adriatic corridor is that it will be extended to Ukraine, as announced by the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies last October.

After 15 years, trains resumed operation on the mountain line from Ukraine to Romania

The “new” corridor will connect the Italian Adriatic coast with Lviv via Hungary and Slovenia. Reportedly, the terminal in Horonda, near Ukraine’s border with Slovakia, will be selected as a hub for goods to be shipped to Italy. The project, announced by Urso, will be presented in detail on March 10 at the LetExpo logistics exhibition in Verona.

A pilot project to transport Ukrainian grain from the Ukrainian railway station in Chop to a terminal in Padua has recently been converted into a permanent service. Each 500-meter-long train will carry 1,200 tons of Ukrainian grain. Chop station was chosen as the starting point for this service, as it is equipped to handle wagons from broad gauge to standard gauge.

The service is organized by LTE Group, which carried out transportation using so-called big-bags. Big bags are industrial containers designed to store and transport loose goods, such as grain. One of the main advantages of using big bags for transportation is the ability to hold huge volumes of goods compared to their own weight.

Railway news you may have missed:

New double deck sleeping cars for Finland