BR separated its freight activities
into 6 businesses, which were offered for sale with their associated
assets such as locomotives, wagons, terminals, and maintenance
depots. In the event 5 businesses were bought by the US operator,
Wisconsin Central who adopted the brand EWS Railway to run the newly
acquired business. These were the 3 geographically based bulk
trainload activities, Rail Express Services which ran postal and
express parcel services, and the distribution business that included
channel tunnel operations. The remaining business, Freightliner was
sold to an MBO.
EWS inherited a level of customer
dissatisfaction from the behaviour of BR in the final years of state
ownership when it had been required by the Government to improve the
financial return of the freight business by increasing prices and
cutting out smaller flows of traffic.
The track access regime created by the
1993 Railways Act allowed new operators to apply for licences and
this has been a feature of sector with 10 companies now holding the
necessary licences to run within the UK and 2 for international
services.
The new entrants have delivered a more
successful financial return than EWS and FCP has a close understanding
of the business model that has made this possible. We believe the
market is by no means saturated as smaller enterprises bring more
effective focus on the market they are serving and provide higher
level of customer services in a controlled cost environment.
FCP also offer unique experience of the
new FMU product, which can reduce the size of payload need to run
profitable services.
