Cargo Wagon and Nexxiot partner to expand rail freight tracking

Partnership between freight digitalisation specialist and Slovakian lessor aims to increase visibility and innovation and accelerate a ‘digital rail cargo transformation’.

Cargo tracking and digitalization specialist Nexxiot and Slovakian based lessor Cargo Wagon have teamed up to increase visibility within European rail freight, allowing Nexxiot to further expand its activities towards Eastern Europe.

As of May 2020, Nexxiot has started equipping the fleet of Cargo Wagon with its Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, to enable global digital monitoring of the fleet. The first upgraded 1,200 digital wagons out of a total fleet of 9,000 will be provided to customers in Poland and Austria.

The two said the move would help accelerate “digital rail cargo transformation” in order to provide new and innovative services for their customers.

Nexxiot’s CEO Stefan Kalmund said: “Cargo Wagon is a key player on the freight wagon market in central and eastern Europe. As a new partner we further advance their digital agenda and growth strategy with our services.

“The introduction of our Globehopper solution and the Nexxiot Connect Cloud will create added value for Cargo Wagon. In addition, we will support the company as a partner with our extensive expertise in the digitalization of the rail sector. Our knowledge in making use of data from connectivity devices will also be of great benefit for Cargo Wagon.”

The IoT sensors developed by Nexxiot, called Globehopper, provide a large amount of data to clients. In addition to this ‘gateway device’, the company has developed a software solution to analyse the information generated. It offers the complete infrastructure with a cloud-based platform for processing the data collected.

For Cargo Wagon, this means an optimized service for their customers, by bringing transparency into critical supply chain events.

Cargo Wagon’s COO Pavel Holomek said the digitalisation of rail freight had become a daily reality for most of its customers, thus also making it a priority on his company’s marketing agenda. He commented: “We will work closely with Nexxiot on improving maintenance of our railcars, fleet management and delivering value added services to the end-customers.

“We are excited about gathering data and getting insights for improved planning, efficiency and sustainability in the business. This will be rolled out as a core solution initially including features like location-based services, shock detection monitoring and maintenance service packages. The project will also include metadata libraries so that customers can store important wagon details in the Nexxiot Connect Cloud.”

Founded in 2015, Cargo Wagon is a joint venture of AAE Wagon, VTG, and ZSSK Cargo Slovakia that has optimized its wagon fleet for steel, power, construction, and wood industry. It has purchased and leases back 8,000 freight wagons to the Slovak national freight carrier and also operates a fleet of more than 1,000 standard freight cars rented in the CEE market to private customers as well as national carriers from Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Netherlands, Poland and Slovenia.

Nexxiot is an industry leader in the development and delivery of digital supply chain management solutions for the rail and cargo sectors. It operates a dedicated logistics cloud with more than 3 billion global data points to allow its customers to take real-time decisions on any cargo or rail wagon.

Source: lloyd’s