Europe Intermodal Terminals Market Size

Europe Intermodal Terminals Market Analysis

The Europe Intermodal Termnals Market is expected to witness a CAGR of more than 5% through the forecast period.

The European Green Deal calls for a substantial part of the 75% of inland freight carried by road to shift to rail and inland waterways. This means in practice using intermodal transport, where the longest part of the journey is run on railways or on water, while only first and last mile is carried on road. This requires efficient transhipment facilities and technologies that make shifting loading units between the modes fast and cost efficient. The container is the most economical loading unit and vertical craning is more efficient than horizontal transhipment, including for semi-trailers, while some innovative technologies that can simultaneously lift several loadings units can reduce handling times in terminals.

The majority (60-80%) of transhipment capacity in the EU is provided by vertical transhipment technologies, followed by RoRo ships (20-35%). Only around 2% of transhipment capacity is today in other technologies. Importantly, by 2030, the transhipment capacity in the EU will not be sufficient to meet the demand of planned network capacity expansion. Therefore, the availability of terminals across the Trans-European Transport (TEN-T) network requires further investments and careful planning, considering that compatible transhipment solutions need to be available in both ends of a rail/waterborne leg. Furthermore, on many parts of the TEN-T network, structural upgrades are necessary to allow transporting semitrailers on train. Most upgrades are necessary in Spain, France and Italy, which together amount to 75% of such sections.

The required investment for the removal of these network limitations (loading gauge for semi-trailers, terminals with specific technology) is assessed being about 7.7 billion euros according to the according to the industry sources.