News

Multimodal specialist Stobart Group is trialling a new pan-European rail service, dubbed the 'rail fruit', taking oranges from the south of Spain direct to its Widnes inland port.

The trial is taking place in conjunction with vehicle-maker Ford, which already operates a rail service to its Valencia plant. However, the collapse in the car market means there is surplus capacity, enabling Stobart to piggy-back on the  service.

Trains will run into Ford's Dagenham, Essex plant and then onward to Widnes "or even straight into Scotland", reveals Stobart chief executive Andrew Tinkler.

"Each train takes 50,000 lorry miles off the road," he adds.

He was speaking at the Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD) 'Sustainable Distribution 2009' conference yesterday, where he outlined the company's strategy to take waste out of the supply chain.

Stobart's road operation has already boosted vehicle utilisation to 85% since 2004, but Tinkler believes it can remove further dead mileage from the business by working more collaboratively with customers and other hauliers.

He also proposed large-scale, shared-user cross-dock operations to consolidate product on to single trailers for delivery into RDCs.

Additionally he said Stobart Group would be looking to open a consolidation centre in the Carlisle area to help manufacturers  and hauliers ensure trailer fill for loads into Scotland. This would ease the current problem of too many vehicles chasing too few loads coming south from the country, due to an imbalance of trade.

He adds: "There would be fewer vehicles fighting for work coming out of Scotland."