On 6 May 2025, Hupac announced its 2024 results, stating that despite an environment marked by infrastructure fragility, rising costs and geopolitical uncertainty, the Group closed the year with a performance it deemed positive. The Swiss combined transport operator maintained virtually stable transalpine traffic volumes through Switzerland. Over the year, the company handled around 949,000 road shipments, equivalent to 1,818,000 standard loading units transported by Hupac, marking a modest decline of 2.6% compared to the previous year. Despite operational limitations caused by the partial unavailability of the Gotthard base tunnel and the closure of the Modane line, traffic through Switzerland held steady at -0.2%, while flows via France and Austria decreased. Non-transalpine traffic also recorded a slight drop of 1.2%.
In 2024, Hupac was affected by delays, cancelled trains, capacity restrictions and growing market distrust, which it attributes to structural weaknesses such as poor infrastructure maintenance, ineffective coordination of construction works, and rising energy and traction costs. These issues threaten Switzerland’s policy of shifting freight from road to rail.
Hupac responded by focusing on efficiency: operating longer and heavier trains, concentrating efforts on key corridors, and reorganising the German maritime network. Thanks to these measures, the Swiss company posted a profit of 9.4 million Swiss francs (around 10 million euros). Its environmental record was also positive: shifting around 18 million tonnes of freight from road to rail avoided 1.3 million tonnes of CO2 emissions and saved 15.5 billion megajoules of energy.
Hupac’s leadership sees Germany as the most pressing threat to the resilience of the intermodal system. Numerous construction sites on the German rail network, often poorly coordinated and communicated late, seriously affect punctuality and service reliability. Fewer than half of Hupac’s transalpine trains arrive on time, and around 20% of services are cancelled due to external factors. Since 2022, transalpine combined transport has declined by 9%, while road transport has increased by 4%. Within this context, the planned closure of the Novara–Freiburg rolling motorway (Rola) by the end of 2025 appears to be an inevitable consequence of infrastructure instability.
According to Hupac, addressing these critical issues requires strong political will and targeted investment. One example is the upgrade of the P400 loading gauge on the left bank of the Rhine (Belgium–Metz–Basel axis), including work on the Strasbourg–Lauterbourg–Wörth line. These are strategic projects that, if funded by Switzerland, would establish a second four-metre corridor north of the Alps, easing pressure on the existing one and improving the overall reliability of the system. Also notable is the proposal to use hybrid locomotives on the Strasbourg–Wörth route, a more cost-effective and short-term alternative to full electrification. The construction of reserve tracks north and south of the Alps is likewise seen as essential to the stability of the network as a whole.
Despite these efforts, rail freight still struggles to fully capitalise on the benefits of the Nfta flatland infrastructure. For example, the Rhine Valley line will not be able to accommodate 750-metre trains before 2045. At present, the limit is 680 metres, making the targeted 10% productivity increase unattainable. For this reason, Hupac is strongly advocating for the extension of operating subsidies beyond 2030, in order to safeguard the long-term competitiveness of combined transport.
In this challenging environment, Hupac is focusing on resilience. During the closure of the Rhine Valley line in August 2024, the company launched a diesel shuttle service via Alsace, in cooperation with SBB Cargo International and Captrain, successfully running up to twenty trains per day. Furthermore, at the start of 2025, several connections between Belgium and Italy were rerouted through France, reducing dependence on the German corridor. Additional measures included train reserves, extra drivers, increased weekend capacity and investments in digitalisation, such as automated terminal operations, higher-capacity wagons, quiet brakes and predictive maintenance sensors.
Hupac expects stable volumes for 2025 across both the continental network and inland maritime connections. Its priorities will be optimising available capacity, enhancing operational quality and developing concrete solutions for the logistics of the future. Over the next two years, the company will focus its resources on north-south axis routes, aiming to guarantee three to four trains per direction each day. According to CEO Michail Stahlhut, more frequent services allow faster responses to disruptions and offer customers more reliable planning. This strategy is designed to strengthen the competitiveness of combined transport at a time when the intermodal market is under significant pressure.
