RAIL4CHEM

In 2000 the railway company RAIL4CHEM was founded as a joint venture among three German companies: BASF (Ludwigshafen), Hoyer Group and VTG AG (both located in Hamburg) and one Swiss firm Bertschi; headquartered in Dürrenäsch. Hoyer merged its rail freight subsidiary (Hoyer Railserv, formed 2000 from RSE Cargo.) into the company in 2002.

Initially the company was set up as a rail freight service for chemical companies. The organisation serves both national and international freight movements within Europe. Later the company took on non-chemical industry freight work.

Amongst the first workings were the movement of chemicals from the works at BASF Ludwigshafen to Aachen to be moved further by the Belgian state railway SNCB / NMBS.

In 2004 the company gained a safety certificate to operate in the Netherlands, and in Switzerland. In 2005 the founder companies increased the capital of the company by €4 million to €5 million to enable the purchase of multi-system electric locomotives. Safety certificate for operations in Belgium was acquired (by the subsidiary Rail4chem Benelux BV) in January 2006, and for operations in France in February 2006,

On 20 February 2008 it was announced that the business was to be sold to the French company Veolia Cargo for an undisclosed sum. Veolia Cargo was acquired by SNCF (and Eurotunnel), with Rail4chem becoming part of SNCF; it was reorganised into the Captrain railfreight operation division of SNCF. The business underperformed during the difficult market conditions of the Great Recession and was absorbed into the Captrain deutschland division in 2010.

RAIL4CHEM was a founder member of the European Bulls Rail Freight Alliance, a European consortium of European rail freight operating companies.

Subsidiaries

In late 2004, RAIL4CHEM established a new subsidiary company: Rail4Chem Benelux NV, after the acquiring and taking over the activities of Dutch private rail carrier ShortLines BV.

Rail4Chem Benelux's main business was the transportation of containers from the Port of Rotterdam to Germany but also operated international tank trains to DSM in Geleen as well as intermodal trains via Amsterdam and cereal trains via Europoort.

RAIL4CHEM was certified to operate in Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium and France.

The trains known as 'mobile pipelines' are operated between the BASF operations in Antwerp and Ludwigshafen.

Up till the opening of the Betuweroute only diesel locomotives were used in the Netherlands.