Operations & Maintenance, Plant, Machinery & Equipment, Rollingstock & Manufacturing

Full capacity for Pacific National

Pacific National is increasing its services to keep Australia’s supply chain moving during the pandemic. 

Australia’s largest private rail freight company has acted in response to a surge in demand for capacity across intermodal (containerised freight) routes, while also improving utilisation of its train services by ensuring booking commitments are met. 

Pacific National Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Thomson said the operator recognised that demands from customers on containerised services is higher than current supply, due to the shift from road to rail driven by COVID-related state border crossing challenges. 

“The result of this is that average monthly volumes across our intermodal network have risen by almost 15 per cent, compared to pre-pandemic levels. This has seen Pacific National operate at what is effectively peak capacity for the last 12 months,” he said 

Entering the 2021 peak period for interstate rail operations, Pacific National has refreshed its booking system, launching Advancepriority and Standardreserve. The two innovative products ensure scarce capacity is allocated, thereby helping to enable access to rail freight services for new or lower volume customers. 

“Pacific National will increase its capacity for container movements on rail by more than a third, compared to pre-pandemic levels, in less than three years. We are also committed to a further increase of ten per cent by March 2022 in containerised freight capacity and a further five per cent by September 2022,”  Thomson said. 

“Additional capacity will be boosted another 25 per cent in the next four years. This represents a significant commitment of capital and resources to continue the growth of freight on rail to deliver reliability and further meet the demands of our customers.” 

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