Railway cargo scheme gets on track
Swiss Federal Railways has announced plans to create a new international cargo business in cooperation with the Swiss firm Hupac.
The independent company will handle transalpine freight travelling along the north-south corridor between Germany and Italy.
Hupac, an intermodal freight operator, will hold a 25 per cent stake in the new company; the cargo division of Swiss Federal Railways will hold the remaining 75 per cent.
The new firm will provide 480 jobs, but the federal railway’s cargo section will have to cut 157 over the next two years.
The redundancies will be made in a socially responsible manner, as railway cargo head Nicolas Perrin said at a press conference on Monday.
Operations are scheduled to begin in early 2011, and the new company will probably be based in the Basel-Olten-Lucerne area.
swissinfo.ch and agencies
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.