Public Funding for GB Railfreight Limited

The LHOFT Project - Liverpool - Humber Optimisation of Freight Transport uniquely brings together the combined strength of a major cargo owner (Unilever) the two key port operators at each end of the M62 corridor (ABP on the Humber and Peel Ports on the Mersey) to combine with experts from the rail industry to input into a study lead by the University of Hull's Logisitics Institute to develop an end-to-end journey model that promotes the diversion of trade from long distance North-South road routes to ports on the East and West of the country. These freight journey's could be further optimised by the use of rail and offers the potential for a huge reduction in the number of freight miles on the UK road system. Technology to be developed by the University will enable multiple cargo owners to pool volumes to de-risk new sea and rail services through northern ports so removing risk barrier that prevents more cargo using northern ports today. Flows to be targetted include ferry services to the continent and all container services where the origin or destination of the cargo is on the M62 corridor.

FreightArranger is a first to the web application for multi-modal freight. FreightArranger is a cloud-based brokerage which allows enquirers to search for, book and track containerised freight consignments by rail while simultaneously organising the road shunts at each end of the rail transit. The main benefits which flow from FreightArranger are that: • Rail freight operating companies are able to fill spare capacity on intermodal freight trains more easily, • Rail freight operating companies are able to interact more cost-effectively with small volume consignment requests, • Consignors are able to access rail freight with less staff effort and a simplified search and quote process, • All parties are able to benefit from access to real-time location information, • Modal shift to rail is enabled, leading to lower carbon emissions and reduced road congestion. Officially titled Intelligent Multimodal Logistics Control and Brokerage Centre, the Project has decided to call itself FreightArranger. The initial concept for the Project was that there were a number of customer-facing problems within the intermodal rail freight industry which existed for valid reasons, but nonetheless acted as barriers to accessing rail freight, with road transit being an easier option. The Project’s aim is to remove those barriers through the application of technology so that more consignors are able to access the benefits of rail freight, and that freight operating companies are able to fill empty slots on block trains and have an additional sales channel for open access trains. The FreightArranger Project lasts for three years. It started in July 2010 with a research phase where extensive interviews were conducted with shipping lines, freight forwarding companies, rail terminals and rail freight operating companies, followed by a software requirements specification and high level software design. At present the software is in a development phase prior to user acceptance testing. An operational trial with live freight bookings is planned for the period April to August 2013 on the following routes: Barking to Daventry, Daventry to Coatbridge, Daventry to Grangemouth, and a further route from Barking/Tilbury. After completion of the trial, FreightArranger will enter commercial operation in September 2013 and plans to extend its services over all rail routes in the UK and Europe. During the research phase, a number of further enhancements and features were identified which will be added to the software through additional investment.