PRIVATE rail freight operator Pacific National is launching an additional service called Seasonalexclusive, to help support the national supply chain during the busy holiday period.
The initiative follows a surge in demand for additional containerised rail freight services, due to a combination of a shift from road to rail haulage during the pandemic, a massive increase in online shopping, and the intensity of buying activity leading into the peak Christmas season.
Pacific National operates more than 300 intermodal services a month. A single container can hold up to 25,000 rolls of toilet paper, 50,000 cans of food,1500 cases of beer, 900 boxes of bananas or 100 fridges.
The extra capacity will be available on east-west routes to Perth and on the Melbourne-Brisbane freight corridors between 25 December 2021 and 1 January 2022. These are services which would not historically run during this time.
Pacific National chief commercial officer Andrew Thomson said, “We’ve developed this offer more than five weeks out from Christmas and look forward to working with our customers to deliver the additional intermodal capacity they need to move more volumes this holiday season, particularly given some of the recent wet weather impacts on the broader supply chain”.
This comes as Pacific National moves to increase capacity for container movements on rail by more than a third in less than three years, compared to pre-pandemic levels.
The company has committed to a further increase in containerised service capacity of 10% by March next year, and a further 5% by September 2022.
