Speaking for the industry
CEPI is taking an active role in ensuring the pulp and paper industry's voice is heard
Published: June 30, 2011
The Confederation of European Paper Industries, more commonly known as CEPI, is taking a very active and direct involvement with transport issues and policy leading up to PPI Transport Symposium 19.
The effort started with the Transport Seminar held as part of CEPI’s European Paper Week in November 2010. Bernard Lombard, CEPI’s Transport & Competitiveness Director, was the driving force behind that seminar and he leads the planning for CEPI’s sessions at TS 19.
Currently, it appears that CEPI will organize two sessions. The first will be focus on EU policy and sustainable transport for the pulp and paper industry. The second will be on the shipping (maritime) industry and the challenge of emissions reduction.
The stage for the policy issue was set in the November Transport Seminar when Pawel Stelmaszczyk of the European Commission, spoke about the upcoming White Paper that was later released in early 2011.
The second issue deals with the proposed low-sulphur content fuel regulation affecting the Sulphur Emission Control Area (SECA) and has been under intense debate already.
Lombard says CEPI supports the main objective of the White Paper, which is to achieve a sustainable development of transport in Europe. “The objectives related to transport sustainability are extremely ambitious and without any equivalent at the scale of a continent in the rest of the world. The European paper industry operates in a global world and is competing in global markets with international competitors, particularly from emerging countries, where environmental and social standards are much lower.”
One thing that CEPI did find is that many objectives and goals for 2050, not so much for 2020 or 2030. Long-term goals are necessary but they have to be completed with intermediary steps.
Lombard adds that the completion of the EU Single Market is indeed a prerequisite to get efficient and sustainable transport, but it should not result in an alignment on the most expensive system. There are still too many discrepancies between the various national technical rules/standards, which result in a sub-optimal use of transport capacities. All transport modes should have their efficiency pushed to their optimum so that all transport options are open to the industry in a flexible and competitive way.
In the road transport sector, the White Paper acknowledges that road transport is, in general, the most efficient transport mode for trips less than 300 km is a positive step. However, the setting of an artificial 300-km average above which freight transport should be shifted from road to other modes of transport is unacceptable, Lombard adds, “Depending on the area, the product and the transport solutions available, there is often no affordable alternative to roads.”
The promotion of co-modality is definitelya good thing, as well as the objective to make rail and inland waterways more attractive. The question is how to reach those goals? Lombard answers, “By improving infrastructure, by developing co-modality platforms and coming up with innovative and competitive offers to shippers.”
Unfortunately, thus far the main way has been to make road transport more expensive and alternative transport solutions are not available more often than not. “Penalising is not the right way.”
Lombard says that contributions have to be fairly split between passenger transport and freight transport and between the various modes when it comes to access to networks, infrastructure maintenance and investments and environmental impact mitigation. Each one should contribute according to its relative importance.Before considering additional costs –road charges, fuels taxes, one should consider first what already exists at national level, how much is collected, how and the use of the money collected.
Road charges should be used to cover the external costs of transport, maintenance and further developments of the transport network, and not to reduce governments’ deficits – the so-called earmarking.
CEPI positions
In late 2010, CEPI issued a number of releases dealing with various shipping methods. For rail freight, it noted that triggered by the paper industry, around 250 million tones/yr of raw materials and finished products are transported across Europe and the volumes transported have gradually increased along with the economic growth, the production, consumption and trade of paper and board. External logistics costs average 10% of turnover. It is of primary importance that European and national legislation leave all the options open for the paper industry to choose the most cost-efficient and sustainable transportation system.
Transport costs have constantly increased over the years because of rising energy price and a tighter supply-demand balance. Further cost increases are already forecasted for the coming years.
At the same time, supply chains have become more complex and the need for shorter delivery times has increased.
Due to continuing globalization and enlargement, more European countries will become transit countries. In addition to the common usual North-South routes, East-West connections and traffic will increase. Austria, Germany, Netherlands and Switzerland are countries that are expected to become EU road transport bottlenecks soon.
Road is by far the main mode of transport for the pulp and paper industry in Europe. Rail services remain in many cases unattractive due to limited flexibility, long transport times and delays, but also the lack of shunting stations and the too fragmented network. In many countries, low cost efficiency and poor quality service combined with too short distances constitute hurdles to rail freight development. Still today, long and unpredictable delivery delays are very common, freight tracking is unsatisfactory and the protection of the goods transported is often insufficient. Moreover, there is a structural lack of capacities and final customers are not/no longer connected to the network in most cases. The European Commission forecasts indicate a further decreasing share of rail freight transport: 8% in 2020 - compared with 12% at the beginning of the 1990s and 10% in 2005 - despite sustained efforts to shift freight from road to rail.
The industry requires a wide range and choice of competitive transport options to meet its existing and future needs. In the end, productivity in terms of price, quality and reliability but also sustainability will decide on the utilization of the various modes. Each transport mode should be therefore encouraged to improve its performance to allow optimized solutions for industry in a sustainable way. Rail has definitely an important role to play, especially in the area of long-distance trips. Any further internalization of external cost should aim at producing a fairer mechanism to cover the costs of the environmental and social damages caused by all modes of transport and not only road as it would create market distortions. It is however not expected to lead to any modal shift, i.e. freight volumes going from road to rail, because of the lack of capacities and the low cost efficiency level of rail. It would result only in generally higher freight transport costs.
This is an excerpt of the article "Speaking for the industry" that appeared in the IFPTA Journal. To read the full story, click here.
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