Europe’s first rail customs corridor
The geographical location of Villach-Fürnitz with its existing rail junction on the Baltic-Adriatic Axis, make it a place with great potential. The rail customs corridor between the port of Trieste and the bonded warehouse in Villach South/Fürnitz is intended to speed up the logistics.
At the end of 2022, Austria and Italy signed a memorandum of understanding to pave the way for the establishment of a rail customs corridor between the port of Trieste and the bonded warehouse in Villach South/Fürnitz.
© ÖBB /Martin Hofmann
Advantages: no long storage times, fewer charges
The rail customs corridor links two bonded warehouses, namely the port of Trieste and Villach South/Fürnitz. This means that containers arriving at the port of Trieste can be loaded without customs procedures or intermediate storage directly from the ship onto the railway in the direction of Villach South/Fürnitz, where the goods are cleared through customs and inspected as necessary. The goods can either be unloaded at the terminal, transferred to trucks or transported onwards by rail.
This gives customers several advantages:
- On request, containers can be loaded directly from the ship onto the train without customs clearance at the port of Trieste – customs clearance takes place electronically during transportation.
- In the event of capacity bottlenecks in the port of Trieste, containers can be transported onwards quickly and do not have to be stored temporarily for customs clearance.
- Long storage times in port and the associated charges are eliminated.
- For freight traffic from Asia in particular, this results in a time saving of around 2 days compared to handling via the North Sea ports.
- In principle, customers decide for themselves whether the goods are cleared through customs in Trieste or Fürnitz.
Andreas Matthä, Chairman of the Board of Management of ÖBB Holding
“The Villach South terminal in Fürnitz is optimally connected to the port of Trieste and offers the perfect link between road, rail and sea for the shipping industry.”
Strengthening Carinthia as a logistics location
The rail customs corridor, unique in Europe, is an important step towards strengthening the competitiveness of the Villach South/Fürnitz location and Carinthia as a logistics hub. A shuttle service between Trieste and Villach South and attractive transport options for existing and future intermodal customers will further contribute to this. These factors also make Carinthia an interesting location for potential settlements of new companies and cooperations.
Klaus Leitner, Managing Director of the Josef Lex & Co. forwarding agent, welcomes the establishment of a rail customs corridor: “As one of the few logistics companies to be located directly in the terminal in Fürnitz, we are available for our customers with warehouse and logistics space at the heart of the first European rail customs corridor. This means that we can unload goods straight from the containers at the terminal, handle them and distribute them on an ad hoc basis. This is what makes the rail customs corridor so valuable for us.”
