Big station at the Port of Dresden: New trailer port brings more goods onto the tracks

By Michael Rothe

Millions of euros can sometimes be invisible. In Dresden's Alberthafen, they have literally been buried since the fall: in a new trailer port, which went into operation on Wednesday.

"Half the money is underground," explains Frank Thiele. He is Head of Sales and Logistics at Sächsische Binnenhäfen Oberelbe GmbH (SBO)a German-Czech association of six Elbe ports. "The earth has been turned upside down here since the beginning of January," says Thiele, who sailed around the world with Deutsche Seereederei back in GDR times. The substructure with separators is often the most expensive part, adds sales manager Wolfgang Schneider.

The Swabian speaks of a long-overdue area redevelopment, which also opens up very good prospects for the future with a 261-metre-long second track. With this project, the SBO has invested around 5.7 million euros in the sustainable transfer of traffic, two million euros of which were contributed by the federal government.

Transportation of goods to Scandinavia

In addition to the ports in Dresden, Riesa and Torgau, the state-owned group with around 150 employees and an annual turnover of almost 25 million euros also includes the ports of Dessau-Roßlau (Saxony-Anhalt), Mühlberg (Brandenburg), Děčín (Tetschen) and Lovosice (Lobositz) in the Czech Republic.

On the opposite side of the port basin, around 25,000 trailers with a volume of 600,000 tons have already been loaded every year - from road to rail and vice versa. Trailers are semi-trailers: 13.6 meters long, two and a half meters wide and weighing a good 30 tons when loaded. They are used to transport goods from Saxony, Bohemia and south-eastern Europe to Scandinavia and vice versa in an environmentally friendly and climate-friendly way.

Since January 2021, such trains - 19 wagons with two such parts each - have been running on the Dresden-Rostock-Dresden route. They bring car parts and more to the Baltic Sea port in six hours, from where they are shipped onwards. In the opposite direction, they often travel to the Czech Republic - by road.

The operator is the freight forwarder LKW Walter with 1,600 employees, an annual turnover of 2.5 billion euros and headquarters near Vienna. With the Saxons, the Austrians want to be pioneers in intermodality - transport chains with several modes of transport.

The Dresden-Duisburg route is now served three times - with the option of increasing the frequency to the Ruhr region to six trains, assuming volume. This condition was not met for the line to Curtici in Romania, so traffic to south-eastern Europe was suspended. Since the end of 2023, however, there has also been a container line to Osnabrück with two journeys per week, mostly with paper products and liquid cellulose, says Schneider.

The new trailer port was built on the south side of the port in order to cope with the increasing demand for combined rail transport and traffic shifts, doubling the overall capacity. The total area of around 30,000 square meters, roughly the size of five soccer pitches, offers space for 100 to 120 trailers.

Twice as many trains as before

The base course for this was produced on site using concrete and construction material milling machines and improved by adding hydraulic binding agents. The innovative construction method saved the removal of 5,000 tons of construction material.

With the new system, SBO can handle up to 20 block trains per week in a 3-shift system, twice as many as before. The investment also includes three shunting and handling vehicles. With these, a train can be unloaded and loaded by four or five men in just over four hours.

With this expansion, the SBO is making a significant contribution to the success of economic investments and the stability of supply chains, said Dirk Diedrichs, the state's representative for large-scale settlements, in recognition of the project.

"Now more than ever, business relocation and expansion projects are linked to the increase in national and international interdependencies and supply chains," he says. Flexible and intermodal mobility in freight transport is an essential prerequisite for the success of investments and a competitive economy.

First concepts for chip giant TSMC

From the hype surrounding the chip factories of Infineon, Bosch & Co, the SBO has high hopes for the future. For the settlement of TSMC The first logistics concepts are already in place, says Head of Sales Thiele. The Asian semiconductor giant has already indicated that it will bring its products by container.

A few years ago, SBO boss Heiko Loroff had also dreamed of such "piggyback trains" to Verona in Italy, but this was "not in priority 1" for Lkw Walter, according to Schneider. Although the Austrians are currently in charge of this type of loading in the port of Dresden, they by no means have a monopoly.

"We are also talking to other such service providers and are open to new train connections," says manager Schneider. More than just mind games? "The east-west axis doesn't end in Duisburg," murmurs Frank Thiele meaningfully. The "ARA ports" - Amsterdam, Antwerp and above all Rotterdam - are "definitely exciting, or Cuxhaven for the UK traffic". The decisive factor is the necessary capacity utilization, which pays off from 70 percent.

And what about the original purpose of the ports, where only one in 33 tons is loaded onto the water due to a lack of shipping space? CEO Loroff sees a shift in transportation from rail to road - due to the uncertainties caused by countless construction sites on the rail network.

Lower fuel prices in Poland and the Czech Republic are also making road transportation cheaper. But the course is set for combined transport in the future, says Loroff, who is optimistic about the "numerous notifications" for Dresden's new trailer port.