Port of Hamburg, Metrans Group Join for Intermodal

The Port of Hamburg and Metrans Group are intensifying their links with Lithuanian Railways. Axel Mattern, Joint CEO of Port of Hamburg Marketing, and Egidijus Lazauskas, Deputy Director-General and Director Freight Traffic for Lithuanian Railways, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding in Vilnius to strengthen cooperation on the routes to and from the Port of Hamburg.

In addition, Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG - HHLA’s intermodal subsidiary Metrans, and Lithuanian Railways signed a Letter of Intent to promote and improve cross-border freight flows.

For years, the Lithuanian economy has been experiencing a tremendous upswing. In the first quarter of 2018, the Confidence Index maintained by the Lithuanian Statistics Office reached its highest level for ten years.

With extremely full order books and capacity utilization already at a high level, Lithuania’s companies will be steeply increasing their investments in new machinery, plant and buildings. In addition, there are the subsidies from the European Union (EU). The Lithuanian Ministry of Finance sees these as doubling in 2018 on last year.

Seaborne freight transport between the Port of Hamburg and Lithuania set a fresh record last year, with around 128,000 standard containers setting a fresh record and producing a 7.8 percent upswing on the previous year. However, rail also plays a big part in freight services between Hamburg and Lithuania.

The partners in the new cooperation attach special importance to implementation of the Rail Baltica and East-West Transport Corridor infrastructure development projects.

Rail Baltica is a rail link planned to run from Warsaw via Kaunas and Riga to Tallinn – with a ferry or tunnel connection to Helsinki. EU member states Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland are involved.

Lithuanian Railways transports freight along tracks with gauges of both 1,520 mm and 1,435 mm in various directions. Freight traffic is mainly with Byelorussia, Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Poland, Kazakhstan, China, Turkey, Germany, Scandinavia and Italy.

In future the Port of Hamburg and Lithuanian Railways will exchange market-related data, promote inter-market deals with joint marketing activities, and cooperate in developing and implementing logistics projects.