Today, 3 June, the one hundredth route container train containing components for Volkswagen cars arrived at the VOLKSWAGEN Rus plant in Kaluga from Germany.

We would remind readers that in November 2007, OJSC TransContainer and Volkswagen Rus signed an agreement on the transportation of components for the assembly of VW Passat, VW Jetta, VW Tuareg and Skoda cars from Kosice (Slovakia) and Mlada-Boleslav (the Czech Republic) to the Volkswagen plant in Kaluga. The company’s partner in this project is the German company Schenker Automotive Railnet, a subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn AG.

“As of 20 January of this year, we have transported to the Kaluga plant in organised container trains around 11,000 TEU. In total this year, it is planned to transport up to 50,000 TEU to VOLKSWAGEN Rus LLC’s plant,” said OJSC TransContainer’s General Director, Petr Baskakov.

He also stated that TransContainer had opened its own agency in Kaluga, responsible for resolving all the automobile plant’s transport and logistics issues. “In addition, we intend in the near future to start delivering containers directly to the plant’s approach lines via the Perspektivnaya station. The first trial delivery using this route took place on 16 January, and showed that we can deliver cargo to the plant quickly and efficiently via the Kaluga and Perspektivnaya stations, which will allow delivery volumes to be significantly increased,” Petr Baskakov emphasised.

OJSC TransContainer’s own representative office in Belarus is responsible for the transfer of containers from narrow gauge to broad gauge lines at the Brest-Severny station, for the marshalling of container trains and forwarding of freightvia Belarus. According to the head of the representative office, Yuri Kapustin, 12 April marked one year from the official opening of the representative office. He further commented that the effectiveness of its operations could be easily assessed from the VOLKSWAGEN Rus project.

“We undertook specific obligations to organise the services for these transport operations and guaranteed the provision of the necessary quantity of platforms and containers. The running of the route container trains was set up jointly with the Belarus Railways and is extremely effective. We have a hi-tech system for the numbered control of movement and deployment of railway cars and containers. This has provided a new impetus to build efficient systems for the joint development of the container business in inter-state rail services,” Yuri Kapustin emphasised.