Ernestas Vaitkevičius, the director of the Mockava terminal, said that CargoBeamer expects to start operating the terminal in mid-2013.
"Our German partners estimate that Mockava's customers will save time and about 10 percent of the transportation costs. The use of rail will help reduce the shipment time of goods to two days, from three days by land-only transport," he said.
It is expected that the terminal will allow reloading semi-trailers from European-gauge railroad cars onto Russian-gauge cars and vice versa, as well as reloading semi-trailers from rail cars onto roads and storing goods from non-EU countries.
CargoBeamer plans to install five modules in Mockava by the end of next year, with this number to be increased to 30 at a later stage. An investment into an analogous intermodal link amounts to 50 million euros. Achemos Grupė is planning to invest 110 million litas (EUR 32m) in further expanding the terminal over a period of several years.
