MOVING containers between ports and inland terminals is now the lifeblood of Britain’s rail freight industry, with maritime intermodal the largest single commodity group and accounting for 1.57 billion of the 3.84 billion net tonne-km recorded by freight operators in the third quarter of 2025-26. According to the latest statistics published by Britain’s rail regulator, the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), the largest of the six freight operators in terms of traffic is Freightliner, which in the third quarter of 2025-26 operated 2.55 million train-km, followed by GB Railfreight (GBRf) at 2.34 million, and DB Cargo UK at 1.59 million.
Created through the privatisation of British Rail’s intermodal business in 1996, Freightliner subsequently diversified into bulk freight and mainland Europe, but has now returned to its roots following the acquisition of the British intermodal business by French container shipping line CMA CGM. Completion of the acquisition was announced on January 29, and the sale of Freightliner’s British intermodal business has involved its former owners Brookfield Infrastructure Partners (70%) and Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC (30%) retaining ownership of the bulk freight business in Britain, now Heavy Haul Rail, as well as Freightliner operations in Germany and Poland and Rotterdam Rail Feeding in the Netherlands, managed by Brookfield.
Freightliner CEO, Chris Lawrenson, sees the purchase of Freightliner’s British intermodal business as “a strategic acquisition” by CMA CGM, offering the prospect of synergies with other businesses within the parent company such as Ceva Logistics. In terms of day-to-day operations, Freightliner will continue to provide intermodal services to a variety of customers, including CMA CGM, which accounts for less than 15% of Freightliner’s total business, as well as other major container lines such as Maersk, Ocean Network Express (ONE) and MSC.
“It shows what can be achieved when you tilt the economics slightly in favour of rail.”
Chris Lawrenson, CEO at Freightliner
“CMA CGM as a customer will be handled in accordance with the contract that existed between the two businesses separate to the sale agreement,” Lawrenson says. But in broader terms, “having a shareholder committed to the container business in Britain can only be good for Freightliner overall,” he says.
Rail moves around 30% of traffic landed at the major container ports of Felixstowe, Southampton and London Gateway, with Freightliner carrying over 800,000 TEU in 2025. Lawrenson expects this figure to grow to over 900,000 TEU this year.
Freightliner has benefited from the track access discount scheme introduced by infrastructure manager Network Rail in August 2024, waiving charges in full for six months for traffic that is new to rail. Freightliner was able to launch five new services as a result of the discount and Lawrenson says the new routes have been able to grow and gain volume over a short period of time. He cites the example of the Felixstowe - Daventry service that was neither full nor competitive with road at the start. The track discount enabled Freightliner to “prove the concept” and build up reliability. “If you build it, they will come,” Lawrenson says. “It shows what can be achieved when you tilt the economics slightly in favour of rail.”
Yet increasing track access charges continue to present barriers to entry. Freightliner has also suffered from changes to the fuel duty regime outlawing the use of red diesel in non-road mobile machinery such as crane and reachstackers, resulting in a major cost increase for the operator which owns 10 intermodal terminals. Investment here includes £24m over the last five years on automated gates and other IT systems to improve efficiency, cutting down the average road vehicle turnaround time at terminals from 57 to 22 minutes.
Growth target
While Lawrenson expects Freightliner to continue to grow in the maritime intermodal market, he believes that rail freight’s next target must be to break road’s stranglehold over intermodal traffic moving between inland terminals as part of national distribution chains. This is considered essential if the government’s target of increasing rail freight traffic by 75% by 2050 is to be met. “We must find a better-value solution for domestic freight where today over 95% of goods are carried by road,” Lawrenson says.
Freightliner strongly supports the government’s growth objective, and believes it is achievable, but only if it is underpinned by the right policy framework, which Lawrenson says must create the conditions to unlock private investment in new locomotives, wagons, terminals and skills. The government must also introduce an appropriate and affordable track access charging regime and provide adequate funding for the Mode Shift Revenue Support (MSRS) scheme, which currently runs until March 2027 and provides grants to offset the higher costs of moving traffic by rail.
More network capacity is needed for freight, both through the availability of efficient and reliable freight paths and infrastructure investment. This includes clearing more routes to the more generous W12 loading gauge, enabling conventional intermodal wagons to carry 9ft 6in-high containers, wide enough to accommodate two standard 1200mm x 800mm Euro pallets side-by-side.
Great British Railways (GBR) will play a central role in achieving these objectives. The new public-sector body is due to come into being next year and will reunite renationalised passenger operations with infrastructure management, currently the responsibility of Network Rail.
GBR will also become the primary decision-maker on access, charging and capacity allocation, taking over many of the functions of ORR that will become an independent appeals body. But with GBR’s clear focus on passenger operations, the rail freight sector has expressed concerns over future access to the network, certainty of which is crucial to guaranteeing that private investment continues.
The Railways Bill that will create GBR is currently before Parliament, and it is being very closely examined by Freightliner and its fellow freight operators, working in conjunction with the Rail Freight Group (RFG) which represents the sector (see panel below).
“There is much to welcome in the bill,” Lawrenson says. “However, it is essential that robust safeguards are put in place for non‑GBR operators, including freight. This requires strong powers for ORR to hear appeals and impose remedies, an access framework that provides confidence and certainty over future network access, and incentives that ensure GBR continues to deliver a reliable service for freight.”
Cutting emissions
Freightliner was one of the first freight operators in Britain to fuel its locomotives with hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) diesel in regular operations. For customers seeking to reduce the carbon footprint of their supply chains, the company has introduced the ECO90 product that enables them to book container movements fuelled by HVO, typically £0.30 per litre more expensive than conventional diesel. Customers can also specify electric traction, as Freightliner is the largest operator of electric traction in the British rail freight sector with a fleet of 27 class 90 locomotives operating around 20% of its services.
“The cost of electricity for traction remains a material challenge, and it remains more expensive to operate electric freight services than diesel,” Lawrenson says. “Addressing this discrepancy will be critical. The future role of GBR should include making electric freight more affordable through appropriate incentives and discounts.”
“Rail needs to be seen as an enabler as part of the supply chain.”
Chris Lawrenson
While Freightliner is able to deploy electric traction on Britain’s main freight artery, the West Coast Main Line (WCML) connecting London with Birmingham, Manchester, and Glasgow, this is not the case on the East Coast Main Line (ECML) between London and Edinburgh. As Lawrenson points out, this is despite Network Rail analysis showing that electric freight services have substantially faster running times than diesel, helping to release capacity on the congested ECML.
“Our class 90 locomotives are normally operated in pairs on heavy freight services,” Lawrenson says. “That configuration is currently prohibited on the ECML due to traction power supply limitations,” Lawrenson says. He also notes that freight services rarely operate end to end under the wires, with gaps in the electrified network including “short but operationally critical sections,” notably the branches to London Gateway and Felixstowe. In addition, key diversionary routes are not yet electrified, including the Joint Line via Spalding and Lincoln that provides an alternative to the ECML between Peterborough and Doncaster. “Bi-mode freight locomotives could help address some of these network discontinuities, but power supply resilience on the ECML would still need to be strengthened,” Lawrenson says.
Making the case for greater investment in the network to improve the efficiency, capacity and sustainability of rail freight in Britain has been made harder by the lower political profile of the sector.
“The government needs to realise that rail is not a cheap alternative to road, but road cannot function without rail, and ports cannot function without rail,” says Lawrenson. “Rail needs to be seen as an enabler as part of the supply chain.”
Government support
SPEAKING in a debate on rail freight in the House of Lords on April 13, rail minister, Lord Peter Hendy, said that the Department for Transport’s (DfT) MSRS scheme and Network Rail’s track access discount policy have been “hugely successful,” awarding £39m over two years to eight freight operators and supporting 19 new flows. He also confirmed that the government objective of growing rail freight traffic by 75% by 2050 will be a statutory target in the Railways Bill.
“In practice, that protects those freight paths that have been in the timetable for a long time but are not necessarily used other than at short notice,” Hendy said. “GBR will not be in competition for those paths. Those paths will have to be reserved in order to allow the target to be effective in the future.” Later in the debate, the minister added: “it is clear that intermodal container traffic, and indeed national container traffic, is the largest growth feature of this market and we should do everything we can to encourage it.”
Railways Bill under scrutiny
FOR Maggie Simpson, director general of the Rail Freight Group (RFG), the Railways Bill as it stands is simply not fit for purpose when it comes to ensuring that freight operators will have the access rights they need under GBR.
One of the most detrimental aspects of the bill, as she told a conference organised by Westminster Energy, Environment and Transport Forum on April 13, is changing the role of ORR to become the appeals body for decisions on access, charging and capacity allocation that in future will be made by GBR itself. “What will we do when these decisions go against us?” Simpson asked, observing that “the opportunity to make meaningful change is very small unless the government wants to. It hasn’t indicated that it wants to,” she said.
Photo: Freightliner
How access to the network for non-GBR operators will be set out in GBR’s yet to be published access and use policy, and where Simpson said “there is a huge amount of work still to done,” including developing new charging and performance regimes from scratch over a relatively short period of time.
With much detail lacking in the bill, Darren Fodey, a partner and member of the rail team at law firm Stephenson Harwood, highlighted the risk that GBR would give preference to its own passenger services. “There seems to me to be a distinct lack of checks and balances at the moment,” he said, describing as “worrying” the powers that the bill would grant the secretary of state for transport to amend or terminate existing access agreements by means of new regulations.
Lucy Ryan, director of rail reform at the Department for Transport (DfT), said that as the bill makes its way through Parliament, discussions with stakeholders will continue. The government’s programme of reform for the rail sector is “robust, evidence-based and sector-supported,” she said, with DfT due to publish shortly a “prospectus” setting out the dates for publishing key supporting documents for the bill. Once the Railways Bill receives the Royal Assent, she expects GBR to be set up 12 months later.
For its part, ORR is working on the assumption that GBR will come into being in autumn 2027, with chief executive, John Larkinson, telling the conference that “a lot of work is already going on” to ensure that GBR has a safety management system approved by ORR in time for Day One, and warning of the “the potential distractive effects” created by change on such a major scale. “It is going to be a huge piece of work,” he said.
