FedEx Ties Up With French Firm To Speed Up Parcel Deliveries In Europe

Paris, France (AHN) - Leading American logistics company FedEx is partnering with French postal service firm La Poste to cut parcel delivery time across Europe. The Cargo Rail Express project will tap 20 French high-speed TGV trains capable of traveling 186 miles (300 kilometers) an hour.

The high-speed trains has nine coaches exclusively for standardized airfreight containers. From the rail, the parcels will be deposited at Paris' Roissy Airport, formerly known as Charles de Gaulle Airport, where over 50 FedEx planes land and leave daily.

The FedEx tie-up connects Paris with other continents and domestic gateways such as Nice, Toulouse, Lyon and Marseilles. The high speed French rail will soon service Lyon and Marseilles and other major European cities like Bordeaux, Lille, Strasbourg, London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Cologne, Bologna and Madrid.

By partly ferrying rush parcels via rail, the Carex project cuts down on carbon dioxide emissions. FedEx spokeswoman Barbel Bussenius explained a big cargo plant uses over 5.3 gallons (20 liters) of fuel, while a truck will consume 1 quart (1 liter) to ferry one ton of cargo for every 62 miles (100 km). To reach the same destinations, TGV trains will discharge only 2 percent of the CO2 emission of a large cargo plane.