The Paris-Rungis wholesale market is eyeing significant growth in train-borne fresh fruit and vegetable shipments with the development of a 25 million euros intermodal terminal. The facility will not only serve the Rungis market, but also the economy of the entire region.
A European tender to build and operate the new terminal, which will cover an area of 130,000 sqm, closed earlier this month. The terminal is earmarked to enter service late-2024/early 2025.
Three new routes
In addition to a rail service which resumed last October from southern France to Rungis, provision is made to launch three routes from the new facility on a daily basis – Barcelona-Rungis-Antwerp-Rotterdam; Avignon-Dunkirk/Rungis and Dunkirk-Rungis. This would increase rail transport’s share in the supply of fresh produce to Rungis to 20 per cent and take almost 60,000 truck runs off the road, reducing CO2 emissions.
“This ambitious project is the second stage in the ‘revival’ of rail transport at Rungis, after the resumption of the train des primeurs (fresh fruit and vegetables) service last October”, Benoît Juster, executive director of Semmaris, which operates the Rungis market, told the Le Parisien newspaper.
His comments were confirmed to Railfreight.com by a company spokesperson who added that moving more perishables by rail was part of Rungis’ ongoing strategy for the decarbonisation of its activities.
End of primeurs service
The primeurs service was axed in July 2019 with the French state railways SNCF, whose freight trains operated the service, citing a lack of profitability, obsolescent rolling stock and the termination of contracts with customers.
This saw shippers turn to the road in order to move the goods. The reversed modal shift caused considerable embarrassment to the French government, which vowed to reinstate the rail service, sustainable transport being a key plank in its environmental protection programme.