“We are looking for locomotive engineers and technical staff. We currently have 470 employees and we’ll get to 570 by yearend,” Iancu said, adding that it takes two years to fully train a locomotive engineer and such people are in short supply on the market.
DB Schenker Rail Romania, part of the Germany’s Deutsche Bahn, competes with state-owned freight carrier CFR Marfa, which is in the red, as well as with private operators like GFR (the largest private railroad carrier), Transferoviar Grup and others.
“We operate as a regional hub, the strategy was to become attractive on the transit corridor to Turkey, Asia for the freight delivered from Western Europe, Germany, France, Spain, which will help our business grow.”
DB Schenker Rail Romania’s CEO said he estimated this year revenue would grow by 2% and that he saw 2015 as a year of operation consolidation.
The company has been operating in Romania since 2000 and has 30 locomotives and 3,000 railcars. Its customers are cement, metal, automotive industry and agricultural companies. It also became the carrier of Ford B-Max cars made in Craiova in October 2013.
“Domestic freight volumes are dwindling, and there’s a lot of pressure on prices.”
Agriculture saved the transport market last year with its freight volumes, unlike construction market, which used to be have the largest volumes of freight carried during the boom years.
The company made investments in its fleet last year, buying cars to transport grain to meet demand from agricultural companies, Eduard Iancu says.
It did not budget significant investment this year but did allocate several million euros for development during the crisis.
Investments and new customers took DB Schenker Rail Romania’s revenue from EUR4.9 million in 2008 to EUR27 million in 2013. Profit went up, too, from RON782,000 (EUR212,000) in 2008 to RON3.8 million (EUR863,000) in 2013.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)