End of November 2016 the meeting of the European Terminal Interest Group AGROA took place in Frankfurt am Main in a much focused working atmosphere. It was also in Frankfurt, where, ten years ago, on 30 November 2006 the very first meeting of a total of 40 meetings so far took place. Actually the meeting was planned as a single event in the first place. On invitation of the consulting company KombiConsult, operators of intermodal terminals discussed with which "soft" and organizational measures the handling capacity of the terminals could be increased. The discussion showed that the individual companies were not alone with their tasks and problems. Basically all terminals face the same challenges, though they may be located and active in different countries and thus dealing with different infrastructures. As a result of the meeting, it was decided to continue with such an exchange of experiences.
At the beginning the group met on the venues of its members without any organizational framework. But to increase the productivity of the group, the members established the Terminal Interest Group AGORA as a permanent working group to meet on a regularly basis. The group is supported by a secretary, which is run by KombiConsult.
Over the years the terminal operators developed and exchanged intensively a variety of so-called "good practices" (applied "sharing economy), e.g. how to improve the productivity and efficiency of intermodal terminals. Amongst others, there is to name the implementation of OCR-gates, the establishment of standardized procedures, the coordination and disposition of the "last mile", the implementation of the ILU-code for the identification of continental loading units, the data exchange with intermodal operators and railway undertakings ("digitalization"), the implementation of key factors, common trainings of employees, the exchange of innovations as well as the development of supplementary services.
(from left to right: Hansjörg Halter, Ralf Dahlinger, Antje Falk, Hans Pieper, Erich Possegger, Robert Groiss, Georg Wurz, Pieter Förrer, Franz Frisch, Berthold Jesse, Ulrich Altmann, Christina Wölfert, Klaus-Uwe Sondermann)
Over the time the group could be increased constantly by more and more
members, now the group presenting about 60 individual terminals in
Europe, including core network terminals with the highest significant
volumes. Gernally all operators of intermodal terminals can be members in
AGORA. The name AGORA is based on the
historical Greek market. Just like in the ancient Greece, where news and
innovative ideas were exchanged and developed on the market, the AGORA
group works the same.
More information can be found on the common webpage
www.intermodal-terminals.eu.
Contact: AGORA Secretary
c/o Kombiconsult GmbH, Klaus-Uwe Sondermann
Zum Laurenburger Hof 76, 60594 Frankfurt am Main
Phone: +49.69.244 32 93 172;
Mail agora@intermodal-terminals.eu
