The German magazine "Der Spiegel" has reported that Deutsche Bahn is likely to invest billions of euros to revitalize its subsidiary DB Cargo, which has been facing problems in freight transport and logistics for several years. In the first half of this year alone, DB Cargo reported a loss of 299 million euros. According to Der Spiegel, DB plans to invest more than €4.2 billion in DB Cargo. The money would come from DB's profitable companies such as long-distance transport, the network, and DB Regio. One billion would come from taxpayers' money.
Deutsche Bahn has not yet given any details of the planned investment. On its website, however, the company said it rejected the reports in the latest edition of the news magazine "Der Spiegel" as false and unfounded.
According to Der Spiegel, the money was expected to be used to buy new locomotives and wagons to the tune of almost three-quarters of a billion euros, while 500 million euros will go towards "transforming" loss-making single wagonload services. More than half a billion is to be spent on IT and digitalization, according to information obtained by Der Spiegel, even though the company has already invested heavily in its IT in the past to little effect and runs more than 15 different systems in parallel.
