Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SAFE-CTS (Efficient and cost-effective intermodal road-rail container freight system)
Berichtszeitraum: 2016-12-01 bis 2017-11-30
At the same time, the market for freight solutions is significant and growing. Frost and Sullivan estimates total European revenues for road and rail freight at €435 billion in 2012 (€390 bn for road and €45 bn for rail freight). Therefore, there is a good business opportunity for new effective solutions within this area. In parallel, governments are pushing for stricter rules in the environmental area thereby supporting green solutions.
Safe Green Logistics A/S (SGL) is an innovative logistics company with a mission to optimize efficiency in the European and global freight transport and logistics. SGL together with key partner PVF Schinenfahrzeuge (PVF), specialized in engineering and product maturation for cargo/freight industries, aim at pursuing the aforementioned business opportunity by demonstrating an efficient and cost-effective freight logistics system based on multimodal transport as an alternative to road transport.
The innovation is based upon a truck/train container transfer system (CTS) and a disruptive re-organization of the freight logistical networks in regional Base terminals. By bringing the disruptive SAFE-CTS concept to market, SGL will drastically optimize the entire inland freight value chain, through cheaper, faster and greener transport of goods. It will empower a paradigm shift by moving part of the increasing freight transport demand from road to more efficient multimodal rail-road transport logistics.
The ultimate long-term vision of SGL is to revolutionize the entire freight transport industry through the massive use of the SAFE-CTS technology. However, the company acknowledges the high risk involved and the need to engage a large number of stakeholders throughout the whole value chain in order to accomplish this ambitious vision. Hence, SGL has decided to follow a phased approach to commercialize the SAFE-CTS system. Firstly, SGL will aim at the demonstration and commercial deployment of SAFE-CTS in individual routes comprising point-to-point transport. This prospect of point-to-point transport lines with one intermodal Base at either end represents a fast route to market by limiting financial, regulatory and technological risks. Once the concept and its value proposition has been proved in the operation of these point-to-point lines, SGL expects to scale the implementation of the concept within enlarged regions comprising networks of several railway lines/cargo routes – thus deploying the full logistical concept, including automatic sorting central HUBs, and related aggregated advantages.
The present innovation project will focus on demonstrating the SAFE-CTS technology in the transhipment of containers loaded with cargo from a truck trailer to a train wagon. This will be the first step towards showcasing the concept and validating the technology under operational conditions, thus representing a key milestone for overcoming prevailing market entrance barriers for SGL.
In addition, several dissemination, exploitation and business development activities were performed during the whole project duration, focused towards achieving our market development objectives. In particular, we have reached a significant number of potential lead customers to showcase the value of the technology and assess possible business models and commercializations strategies. Furthermore, we liaised with other stakeholders within the freight transport and railway industries to study and collect relevant information on market needs and requirements.
In a nutshell, the novel SAFE-CTS solution is a key enabler for door-to-door freight delivery based on cost-effective road-rail multimodal transport, relying on CTS units that are adaptable to the freight forwarder´s existing containers, trucks and train wagons, and thereby enabling fast and passive containers exchange between trucks and trains, without using heavy cranes, vehicles or other equipment. The passive system to transfer containers will require very low investment in road-rail modal interfaces (intermodal Bases). The facilitated access to freight railway services through the access points to trains and the improved efficiency and cost-effectiveness of intermodal operations introduced by the novel CTS will dramatically increase the competitiveness of rail transport mode against the road-based transport of goods. Accordingly, SAFE-CTS will enable a significant reduction in internal costs, as a result of the lower costs of rail transport.
In addition, SAFE-CTS will have a large positive effect in terms of external costs borne by the society, essentially by drastically reducing the number of trucks in the roads thus enabling safer and greener transport. In particular, the SAFE-CTS concept is projected to enable a reduction of the road freight emissions of CO2 by at least 35% by moving traffic from roads to trains. In the longer run, the wide implementation of the concept will enable implementing freight transports based on electrical vehicles, by reducing truck routes to a maximum of 100 km per run day (50 km per trip). This would boost further the societal and environmental gains – enabling zero-emissions freight transports.