It’s a done deal: Under a transaction signed in February 2020 and now approved by the relevant antitrust authorities, VTG Rail Logistics GmbH has acquired a majority stake in Slovakian railway company Carbo Rail. With immediate effect, the Hamburg-based group has thus taken full charge of Carbo Rail’s strategic development and operational management. Carbo Rail will be integrated in VTG’s Retrack railway company and will in future operate under the name Retrack Slovakia. “Its operating licenses for Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary make Carbo Rail a sensible complement to our Retrack network that sustainably reinforces our presence in Central and Eastern Europe,” says Günther J. Ferk, Head of VTG Rail Logistics Europe. “Working together under the same name, our commitment is to supply customers with seamless, single-source transaction services and end-to-end forwarding solutions along the most important transportation corridors all over Europe.” In the future, this expansion of the Retrack network will enable trains to cross borders along an entire corridor without the hassle of uncoupling and recoupling. The new partner in the Retrack network is contributing not only its licenses but also its assets, including 25 locomotives, and its approximately 150 employees.
VTG Retrack – Logistics partner on the rail
VTG’s Retrack network establishes logistical links between Europe’s key business and industrial hubs, enabling single wagons, groups of wagons and entire block trains to be tracked and traced. The network optimizes rail-based freight traffic in light of all cost factors – from critical volumes to large-scale solutions. Retrack achieves this goal by intelligently joining up all the available options afforded by the rail network in a given freight traffic corridor. In 2007, an alternative concept to the national railway’s single wagon system was devised within the context of an EU project – what emerged was Retrack. Multiple railway companies joined forces with the aim of simplifying single wagon transport and offering customers a new cross-border European portfolio with a reliable running schedule. In 2014, after several partners had withdrawn from Retrack, VTG decided to take control of the project. True to the VTG motto "make rail easy", Retrack offers its customers individually scalable and efficient transport services.