NOSTA Group participates in EU project MultiRELOAD

The NOSTA Group is an official partner of the EU project MultiRELOAD. Research is being conducted into how the transport chain can be made more efficient, effective and sustainable by integrating inland ports. To kick things off, the 22 project participants - small, medium-sized and large companies as well as technology and research institutions - met earlier this month at Duisburger Hafen AG, which is coordinating the study. Over the next 36 months, practical research will be carried out to find out how multimodal transport can be made more attractive by integrating European inland ports as strategic hubs.

"Like all industries, transport needs to become more sustainable as soon as possible. The problem is that there is currently no practical alternative to diesel for road haulage. Nevertheless, there is potential to reduce emissions, such as through the closer integration of rail and inland waterways. That is why we have high hopes from our participation in MultiRELOAD," says Thore Arndt, Head of Project & Innovation Management.

Europe's 225 or so inland ports, many of which act as important multimodal logistics and economic hubs, play a key role in this context. These interfaces of multimodal transport chains provide optimal conditions for changing and combining different means of transport. If this can be done smartly, the proportion of goods transported by road, which is currently around 75 percent, can be significantly reduced. Even without a technological change in truck drives, this will still lead to a reduction in greenhouse gases in the transport chain.

In cooperation with the other project participants, the NOSTA Group will therefore initially develop solutions for efficient freight transport by rail and waterway by 2025 and will subsequently test and evaluate them under practical conditions. Among other things, this includes the search for particularly suitable routes and a comprehensive review of economic viability. Another focus is on special transport variants, such as less than container load (LCL) and less than truck load (LTL), and the extent to which these can be optimised.

Overall, the project layout is geared towards the following three objectives:

1. reducing road transport by five per cent by shifting to ship and rail;
2. increasing transshipment capacity and improving operational efficiency by 20 per cent by establishing and automating digital multimodal hubs and corridors;
3. reducing the average cost of freight transport by 10 per cent by implementing innovative freight solutions.

"We are convinced that by sharing existing capacities more effectively - i.e. data, infrastructure, cargo space - a radical increase in efficiency can be achieved in the supply chains. As a result, the environment benefits just as much as we do as a service provider and, ultimately, so does the end customer. We are all the more pleased to be able to actively participate in this important project," says Thore Arndt.