OFP La Rochelle is a rail freight company; a joint venture between

Euro Cargo Rail DB Cargo France is a French rail freight operator. It is presently a subsidiary of the German state-owned logistics company DB Cargo. DB Cargo France was originally established as Euro Cargo Rail (ECR) in early 2005 by the British freight comp ...

and the port of

La Rochelle La Rochelle (, , ; Poitevin-Saintongeais: ''La Rochéle''; oc, La Rochèla ) is a city on the west coast of France and a seaport on the Bay of Biscay, a part of the Atlantic Ocean. It is the capital of the Charente-Maritime department. Wi ...

. The company's first operations began in October 2010.

History

In December 2009 the ''NaviRail Atlantique'' was formed as an Opérateur Ferroviaire de Proximité - a type of short line railway company - and port railway operator for the port of La Rochelle; the company was to be a joint venture between SNCF (49%) and the port (51%), however due to SNCF's doubts about the profitability of the enterprise formation the company was not finalised. Due to this the port authority sought an agreement with

. In 2010 OFP La Rochelle was formed as a joint stock company; with

Grand Port Maritime de La Rochelle La Pallice (also known as ''grand port maritime de La Rochelle'') is the commercial deep-water port of La Rochelle, France. During the Fall of France, on 19 June 1940, approximately 6,000 Polish soldiers in exile under the command of Stanisła ...

contributing 75.1% of the share capital and Euro Cargo Rail 24.9%. It is responsible for short-haul freight operations around the port of La Rochelle. The first train, in October 2010, carried petroleum products to the Creuse. At start up the company had a fleet of two Vossloh G1000 and four

Class 77 Class 77 may refer to: * British Rail Class 77, a British electric locomotive *Class 77, a designation for EMD Series 66 operated by Euro Cargo Rail in France * DRG Class 77, a German tank locomotive class with wheel arrangements 2-6-4T or 4-6-2T ...

locomotives. Potential traffic included cereal, forest and paper products, and petroleum; the company hoped to increase the

modal share A modal share (also called mode split, mode-share, or modal split) is the percentage of travelers using a particular type of transportation or number of trips using said type. In freight transportation, this may be measured in mass. Modal share i ...

of traffic from the port from 7 to 10% by 2011. After one year of operation the company had transported 100 kilotonnes of freight.

Notes

References

External links

*, association of OFPs * *{{cite web, url= http://www.inrets.fr/fileadmin/ur/splott/Publications/Rapports/EvalOFP_Rapport_final.pdf, language=French, title = Evaluation d’expérimentations d’opérateurs ferroviaires de proximité, at = 2.3 Projet : les OFP portuaires : La Rochelle , pp. 55–57, date = October 2010, publisher = Institut national de recherche sur les transports et leur sécurité, author1=Laetitia Dablanc , author2=Patrick Nierat , author3=Cécile Ruby , author4=Gunnar Knitschky , author5=Barbara Lenz , author6=Piere Zembri , work = inrets.fr Railway companies of France DB Cargo UK La Rochelle Transport in Nouvelle-Aquitaine