BUDAMAR LOGISTICS and Inter Cargo are heading to the prestigious railway fair TRAKO in Poland
The international forwarding company BUDAMAR LOGISTICS will take part at the 15th international railway fair TRAKO in Gdansk, Poland this September. It is the largest and most prestigious meeting of the railway transport sector in Poland and the second largest in Europe. "Poland is one of the key markets for us. Apart from being the strongest economy of the V4 countries, Poland is where our Group has played a major role in stabilizing the rail network. Moreover, we see professional exhibitions such as TRAKO as an ideal platform for conducting professional discussions and also for mutual inspiration," said Ľubomír Loy, Member of the Board of Directors at BUDAMAR LOGISTICS.
BUDAMAR LOGISTICS will participate at the TRAKO exhibition together with the company Inter Cargo. It belongs to the BUDAMAR GROUP portfolio, while the shares of the company are also owned by Železničná spoločnosť Cargo Slovakia through its subsidiary firm called Bulk Transshipment Slovakia.
Inter Cargo is based in Katowice and is today one of the leading rail transport operators in Poland. It supplies Slovak and Czech industrial enterprises with raw materials and also exports the completed products in the opposite direction. Inter Cargo regularly participates at TRAKO events. "Participation in the fair is a great honor for us as well as for the entire BUDAMAR GROUP and at the same time a certain responsibility. It is an opportunity to meet our business partners, to express our gratitude for the trust they have placed in us. And it is also an opportunity to gain new partners who are looking for solutions for their business," says Marián Šimlovič, Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors at Inter Cargo.
Inter Cargo has recently opened its new branch in Gdynia in northern Poland. Currently, the company operates in the ports of Gdynia and Gdansk using exclusively its own locomotives. "The main goal has been to use internal capacities and not to rely on leased rolling stock or third-party train shunting services. They were not always willing to help or did not have sufficient capacity," explains Marián Šimlovič. The new branch increases the quality of services that Inter Cargo can provide to its customers.
Simultaneously, the conflict in Ukraine has confronted the company with a difficult task of dealing with a significant market change overnight. "The shipments that had been in operation for many years suddenly stopped operating. On the other hand, new substrate transports and thereby completely new commodity flows have appeared," says Marián Šimlovič. According to him, it was necessary to respond quickly to these changes, but nobody on the market was prepared for this - neither technologically nor in terms of capacity. "I dare to say that the fact that we are a member of a strong and stable group is what has helped us. We are able to react to changes flexibly just because of the ability to access the large fleet of wagons and railcars that the group has at its disposal," responds the Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors at Inter Cargo.
All carriers in Europe today, he added, are particularly worried about energy prices. "In Poland, the major energy supplier has been nationalized and the conditions for contracting prices for the future period were changed. It will therefore be important for us to correctly predict the volume of energy consumed and also to establish a competitive position compared to other railway companies in the short term. If we manage to do this, I think we will be able to keep our market position for the next period as well," explained Marián Šimlovič. In the mid-term horizon, the company would like to gradually replace its locomotives with new types, which will be able to operate mainly cross-border transports.
ABOUT BUDAMAR GROUP
The Slovak group was founded in 2002. The company is a leading international freight forwarding and logistics provider in the Central and Eastern European market. Most of the Group's customers are industrial companies operating outside the Slovak Republic, mainly in the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Austria. BUDAMAR GROUP provides rail, road, river, sea, multimodal and intermodal transport services, it also provides customs-declaration services, warehousing and complex consulting. Together with its subsidiaries and sister companies, it currently employs over 4 500 people.
The quality of our services in Poland has increased rapidly
Marián Šimlovič, Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors at Inter Cargo, a company from the BUDAMAR GROUP portfolio:
Inter Cargo is currently one of the strongest players in the rail transport sector in Poland. What does this position mean to you?
Poland's strong and much larger internal market compared to Slovakia, as well as its direct access to the Baltic Sea and the border with the former Soviet Union countries, creates many business opportunities. We appreciate very much that we have successfully established ourselves in this market and we also appreciate the success we are achieving there. We are particularly committed to our reputation and to the good relationships we have with our customers and suppliers.
You have recently opened a branch in Gdynia. Why?
Our company is built on the need to supply Slovak and Czech industrial enterprises with raw materials and to export finished products and other goods in the opposite direction. Our headquarters is in Katowice, right in the heart of Silesia, which supplies most of the Slovak and Czech heavy industry with its ´black gold´. This puts us close to partners who use our services for this type of transport. The branch in Gdynia provides an important point of contact with partners in the Baltic ports - our second important hub. The development of port facilities is one of our priorities - this is also why we consider our participation at TRAKO in Gdansk as very important.
In Gdynia, you perform the operation exclusively with your equipment. Is this also the case in Gdansk?
The Port of Gdansk operates technologically a little differently than the Port of Gdynia. However, if there is a need for shunting services on the Gdansk quays, where the technological service is not provided by the port, we transfer our capacities from Gdynia for this purpose. As one of the main goals of our company has always been to use in-house capacities and not to rely on leased rail vehicles or third-party shunting services. They have not always been willing to help or have not had sufficient capacity. Often it has happened that we have not been able to respond in terms of capacity when a customer has required us to perform certain operations at ports. Nowadays, we can say that we no longer have this problem and we are improving the quality of our services.