Rail freight is more often associated with bulk materials than consumer goods, but the surprising fact is that Britain’s railways now carry more Coke and other drinks than coal and coke. The mainstay of rail freight until 2014, coal and coke movements have now all but ceased, with the final train to a power station running in June 2024. A few trains a week continue to operate for cement and steel works, but these will disappear as both industries decarbonise over the next few years.
A remarkable transition has taken place over the decade, and consumer goods are now the largest commodity moving by rail in the UK. Import and export movements form the bedrock of this, both from the Deep Sea and from within Europe. Large quantities of wine arrive in containers at London Gateway, Southampton and Felixstowe from the main producing areas around the globe. Some are bottled at source, but large quantities arrive in bulk, either in tank containers or, more commonly, in standard 20’ boxes fitted with a food-grade liner. Many bulk wine containers are too heavy to be moved by road and are forwarded by rail to terminals close to the bottling plants, with ‘final mile’ delivery by road under a permit.
Within Europe, large quantities of French mineral water move by rail in two dedicated trains a day, direct from the source to a rail-connected national distribution centre at Daventry in the English Midlands. Unusually, these are not intermodal services carrying containers or swap bodies but trains made up of 58-tonne capacity fully enclosed wagons, which are ideally suited to heavy ambient products such as bottled water.
Many of these import moves – and exports of products such as whisky – are long-standing flows, but the last few years have seen the introduction of long-distance domestic services for drinks logistics. Most notable are the four daily trains for Coca-Cola between Yorkshire and London, plus Yorkshire and Scotland. In each case, trains are loaded in both directions, carrying beverages produced at the main plant in Yorkshire to market and returning with drinks produced at satellite plants in the South East and Scotland. This includes some third-party volume for other drinks manufacturers, particularly from Scotland.
Scotland also features in another significant investment in modal switch. Highland Spring’s main bottled water production plant at Blackford, near Gleneagles, has seen a new rail siding installed to permit its output to be loaded directly to the rail. This avoids HGV moving through Blackford village, as well as saving large quantities of carbon on the long journey to markets in the South. A daily train operates from the plant to a distribution centre at Daventry.
In a panel discussion at Multimodal 2024, Nestle emphasised that it, too, is keen to increase its use of rail and has a number of projects under development.
Drinks also form a significant element of retailer deliveries, and Tesco has led the way in the modal switch to rail, describing its rail network as ‘the backbone of our trunking operation’. Daily trains operate from the company’s rail-connected national distribution centre at Daventry to Scotland, Yorkshire and the North East, with two trains a day to South Wales and London. The latter is notable in that Daventry is barely 100 miles from London, but rail is competitive with road movement. There is also a daily train connecting the Tesco RDC in Central Scotland with its stores in the Highlands via an intermodal terminal in Inverness.
Tesco’s rail operation already removes over 500 HGVs a day from Britain’s roads, and this is set to increase further with two new services to Manchester understood to be commencing shortly, which will take the total to around 650 HGVs a day, or c.200,000 a year.
For all this progress, there is considerable scope to increase the movement of drinks (and other consumer goods) by rail. The Government has set a rail freight growth target of 75% by 2050, and the Chartered Institute of Logistics & Transport calculates this is capable of being exceeded by a wide margin. A doubling of rail freight is readily achievable, and a trebling is not out of reach if the significant modal shift of consumer goods trunking can be achieved. Drinks will play a significant part in this, with volume moves of beer, cider and whisky being ideal candidates for movement by rail, as well as further penetration of bottled water and wine supply chains.
Julian Worth
Chair, Rail Freight Forum, Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport
June 2024
Credit opening photo: Pixabay
