Nordicum - Real Estate Annual Finland 2014 | Page 64

Photo: Finavia Oyj

Grönlund, Vice President at Kemira, said
that combining various modes of transport
is the biggest challenge for the company in
Russia.
Nurminen Logistics, for one, has
solved the problem by buying its own train
wagons – 1,000 of them, in fact. Since the
roads can only take so much, it seems evident that the share of railway traffic is bound
to grow.
At the RailForum seminar, there were
also more far-reaching ideas. Riivo Sinijärv,
Managing Director of Baltic Rail, suggest62 Nordicum

ed that trains could easily run from Mediterranean to the Baltic Sea and take goods to
Russia via Finland. Sinijärv’s company had
already achieved success by running block
container trains from Koper to Gdansk via
various connections. Having started the
business in 2011, Baltic Rail remains the
only player operating under such concept.

Northern Reach
Angelo Aulicino from Interporto Bologna
agreed that goods going from Italy to Mos-

cow could conceivably take the northern
route. What is needed is flexible mix trains,
management orchestration and minimising
operations, Aulicino pointed out.
Lappeenranta University of Technology Professor Olli-Pekka Hilmola assessed
the rail situation in the field now and in the
near future. Hilmola is eager to see Finland
cut the cord with regards to oil: he believes
the answer to lie in trains and containers. In
his view, the “Finnish love affair” with roads
and trucks is getting tiresome.