The international logistics specialist, Rhenus, is restructuring its groupage freight solutions for transporting goods by road in Europe. Following a successful test phase in Germany, the newly organised structure will apply to the entire European network from 8 January 2024 onwards. Rhenus will enable its customers to enjoy much shorter delivery times and higher departure frequencies through daily connections and departures all over the continent through its solution entitled Groupage Network 2.0, which is designed to increase efficiency.
As supply chains around the world are becoming increasingly time-sensitive, transporting goods from A to B is a crucial factor for most companies. This is the reason why the Rhenus Group have developed the new Road Freight service known as Groupage Network 2.0. The goal is to offer their customers daily collections and departures to any destination in Europe, regardless of where they are based. In the past, Rhenus only offered these kinds of daily groupage freight services in highly industrialised regions with a great deal of potential for closely synchronised departures. The international logistics specialist only provideddepartures for consignments twice a week in regions with little industry until now. Thanks to the new structure for cross-border traffic, Rhenus will handle daily departures from each region in Europe to any destination on the continent from now on – regardless of where the customer has its base.
The new Rhenus groupage freight network is designed to be extremely efficient in order to provide quick and reliable deliveries for consignments to and from destinations all over Europe. A hub structure involving different countries will ensure that it is possible to process imports and exports daily. Shipments will initially make their way to the country gateway, which will act as the main regional transhipment point in the relevant nations, as the first–mile logistics service. From there, Rhenus will transport the goods to the central European hub, where the cargo will be consolidated according to its destination and sent on its way. “We’ve selected Hilden in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia as the strategically and geographically suitable centre to act as the pan-European transhipment point after using a centre-of-gravity analysis. We can provide short distances and efficient main services, pick-up runs and final deliveries here,” says Carsten Hölzer, the Managing Director of Rhenus Road Freight, explaining this development.
The higher frequency for freight forwarding deliveries in the general cargo sectorwill ensure that there will no longer be any “blank areas” on the map of Europe, where customers have to accept long transit times. Following a two-month test phase, during which minor inconsistencies in the process were eliminated or essential changes were made, the structural switch to Groupage Network 2.0 is now ready to be launched across Europe. This means in practice that Rhenus will be able to transport its customers’ goods on trading routes all over Europe much faster than in the past via its pan-European road traffic network, which involvesmore than 150 Rhenus locations. When compared to 2023, the transit times for groupage freight traffic will fall by an estimated 34 percent. Customers will also benefit from much greater transparency in the network and the same commitment to quality at each business site.
One additional benefit of the daily services for consignments is the opportunity of combining the transport solutions with local warehouse and transhipment options. Rhenus offers this service as “Transport-Related Warehousing” in all the European countries. This means that customers have access to local warehouse capacity that is very close to their supply chains. As a result, both options together enable much more flexible logistics operations with efficient upward and downward scaling, depending on what the customer needs.
