Freightliner parent back in profit

<p>A bulk cargo boost and government subsidy have allowed Britain’s second largest freight train operator to report a pre-tax profit of 4.4m (US$6.9m), a turnround from last year’s 2.7m loss.</p> <p>Management Consortium Bid, which owns Freightliner Intermodal and Heavy Haul, made an operating loss of 7.6m on total group turn-over of 151.8m in the financial year 2001&#4702.</p> <p>MCB reported that it had to make exceptional payments of 2m to write off depreciation on its Class 47 locomotive fleet and 1.4m in redundancy and restructuring costs.</p> <p>The operating level deficit was turned into black ink by 15.7m of track access grants paid by the Strategic Rail Authority.</p> <p>Freightliner, the UK’s principal rail transporter of maritime boxes, saw intermodal container volumes fall by 7% on the previous year to 587,291 units.</p> <p>As a result the Intermodal subsidiary made a pre-tax loss of 2.7m, an improvement on a divisional 4.8m deficit last year.</p> <p>Intermodal turnover stood at 114.2m, down from 120.5m the year before, reflecting "long-term restructuring to more closely match resources with customer demand," a spokesman said.</p> <p>"The emphasis is on implementing a value-driven strategy rather than the volume-driven business approach used previously.</p> <p>"The strategy has been physically introduced in the form of a new intermodal operating timetable which came into force at the beginning of this calendar year."</p> <p>Freightliner said it is attracting back business it lost as a result of the operating restrictions imposed by Railtrack following the train accident at Hatfield in October 2000. </p> <p>Heavy Haul, which transports coal and other non-unitised cargo, made a pre-tax profit of 5.5m while turnover rose from 10m to 37.6m.</p> <br />