Railrunner Europe has filed for insolvency in the bankruptcy court of Hamburg in Germany.
The company cited multiple reasons for the financial distress and has appointed a preliminary insolvency administrator in the process.
During the insolvency proceedings, RailRunner Europe intends to reorganise and restructure the company.
Since July 2017, the company managed daily flow between Bratislava and Braunschweig in Germany, utilising mega-trailers, swap bodies, containers and pocket wagons.
The company planned to expand its offering in Germany by introducing technology that would streamline the container loading process onto rail bogies.
However, increase in first and last mile costs due to long latencies in loading and unloading processes of trailers at plants and warehouses restricted the scalability of European operations, the company said.
RailRunner Europe also cited that limited rail service due to track infrastructure works on the Elbe valley route, as well as demands for extremely long payment periods from its clients, narrowed revenue flow for the company.
Extreme weather conditions in Germany and the southeast European region, as well as poor industrial outlook, has also affected business.
The company is the European business of US intermodal operator RailRunner and is said to have served more than 200 customers.
RailRunner Europe managing director Charles Foskett was quoted by media sources as saying: “While large challenges still remain, under this more controlled environment we will have the opportunity to mitigate some of the market externalities, as well as to focus on our internal operations and improve our financial performance for the benefit of all of our customers and commercial partners.”
