the port of Marseilles Fos approaches the markets of Europe center-oriental



The port of Marseilles Fos will ulteriorly approach the markets of Europe center-oriental thanks to the insertion of the railway line of 450 kilometers that connects the French harbour port of call with Geneva in the European corridor Sea of the North - Mediterranean, one of the nine transeuropee nets of transport TRIES that it will become operating in 2018, inclusion that - is emphasized thursday in the course of the presentation of the connection to the Palace of the Stock exchange of Marseilles in occasion of the visit in the city of the Swiss ambassador in France, Bernardino Regazzoni - it is obtained after beyond two years of intense activity of lobbying.

Regazzoni has evidenced the importance of the line for a country as Switzerland without outlet on the sea, than - it has specified - the possibility will have so to pick the opportunities offered from the marine transport and of which could benefit also the increased collaboration between France and Germany.

Fluvial Union Maritime ET de Marseille-Fos (UMF), the association that represents the companies of the row of the marine transport that gravitates on the port of Marseilles Fos, has worked alacremente in order to obtain this result. "We have met - Jean-Philippe Salducci has confirmed, than he guides the UMF and that he is president of the trade-union union of the pilots of the port of Marseilles - all the loaders and the shippers in France and Switzerland in order to elaborate the studies necessary in order to put in work this service. In the 2015 we have had an encounter with the federal Office of the transports of Switzerland to the aim to analyze the best technical and logistic solution. From the French side, Réseau Ferré de France has helped us to characterize the line and to choose the traces that are consistent to the shape of the corridor, saving therefore ulterior investments".

The objective of this job - Salducci has explained - is that to make of Marseilles Fos the natural port of Switzerland romanda, with the scope to recover traffics that in the last few decades are diverted towards the port of Rotterdam because of the deficiency of reliability of the determined French port of call from the social conflicts that have characterized the life of the port.

Salducci has announced that initially weeklies magazine between the port of Marseilles Fos and Geneva are previewed two railway connections and the intention is to increase the frequency to two trains to the day, graces also to the coming volumes of traffic from the ports of Genoa and Barcelona, with the auspice of being able afterwards to arrive to four every day departures.

Such activity, than second the esteem has a potential market pairs to a traffic of about 16.000 container per year, will determine an increase of the occupation being previewed ten new 1,000 places of work every container transported on the railway line, of which you are in the logistic section, three in that of the activity of transport and in the harbour field.

"The opening of this axis - it has found the president of the Chambre de Commerce ET of Marseille-Provence Industries, Jean-Luc Chauvin - sure constitutes a good news for the companies, but also for the territory because its attrattività will be strengthened. The inclusion of Marseilles in the European corridors and the extension towards Geneva approaches us the realization of a our ambition: Marseilles Fos would have to be seen as the door of income of southern Europe. Our territory and our port are the natural door towards the Mediterranean, Africa and more in the future towards Asia. Naturally this moves the barycentre of the commercial exchanges with southern Europe".

Christine Cabau-Woehrel, general manager of the Harbour Authority of Marseilles, has emphasized that the increase of the port happens also through its connections with the outback: "to imagine a port without efficient connections and of large-capacity towards its hinterland - he has observed - it is absurd as to imagine a supermarket place in the end of a pedestrian distance". Moreover, remembering that they pile to 300 million euros in ten years the programmed investments from the harbour authority in order to upgrade the railway ability of access to the harbour terminals, Cabau-Woehrel has evidenced that the extension of the railway corridor to Switzerland is important "because probably will give the key to us in order to approach Germany, Belgium, Holland and, because not, to Russia".