Rail Cargo Hungaria is doubling its transport capacity in order to meet the increased demand from the public for firewood as soon as possible. This move comes as the firewood extraction capacity in Hungary has been unable to keep up with the increased public demand. Rail Cargo Hungaria will provide 100-110 wagons per week instead of 50-60 wagons per week to transport the firewood to less wooded regions of Hungary.
The Hungarian government had previously implemented a fixed-price firewood programme, which ended on 15 April 2023. Between the start of the government programme in October 2022 and 15 April 2023, the company delivered 1,347 wagons of firewood to their destinations. Despite the end of the programme, Rail Cargo Hungaria will continue to deliver firewood orders already placed.
The transport of firewood is a resource-intensive rail activity that requires forestry companies to occasionally order two or three wagons to transport the timber by rail to the loading points. Rail Cargo Hungaria then uses its locomotives to tow the consignment to the marshalling yard, where the wagons are sorted into trains and forwarded to their destination as a block train. This type of transport requires 4-5 shunting operations at each marshalling yard with a separate shunting locomotive
The firewood is transported from 29 dispersed loading points to 16 destinations in the eastern part of Hungary by Rail Cargo Hungaria, which is exclusively responsible for rail logistics for the government programme, using single wagonload rail transport technology with nationwide coverage. The points of sale are located up to 300-400 kilometers from the forests, so RCH's trains have so far covered hundreds of thousands of kilometers and transported more than 80,000 cubic meters of wood.
