Initially, Swiss private operator Crossrail is running three services a week for P&O Ferrymasters between Muizen (Belgium) and Brindisi, with a commercial stop in Novara in northwest Italy. There are plans to increase this to four services a week by end-2009.
In Novara, P&O Ferrymasters can dispatch containers to Pomezia (Rome) and Naples.
From Brindisi, containers are shipped overnight to Patras in Greece.
UK-bound shipments can easily connect to Ferrymasters' existing Muizen to Zeebrugge service.
Prior to the launch of the new service, three different trains had to be used to transport loads from the Benelux to Brindisi (Zeebrugge-Novara, Novara-Bari and Bari-Brindisi).
According to P&O Ferrymasters' director of Intermodal, Bart Verbeke, the news service enables the company to reduce traditional delivery times to Greece to an average of seven working days.
He added that the new service also offers greater capacity, frequency and reliability than the domestic rail services, which have recently been prone to strike action and rising costs.
