At the Lehrte fast handling facility, the freight units also have connections to the destinations Duisburg, Munich and Ludwigshafen. On the occasion of the first train departure from Schwedenkai, Dr. Dirk Claus, Managing Director of the PORT OF KIEL, said: "The new connection via Hannover Lehrte now gives us the capacity we need to shift even more hinterland traffic from road to rail."

The trains are operated by Kombiverkehr KG, Frankfurt, whose Head of Sales Peter Dannewitz explained: "The MegaHub Lehrte enables us to expand the connections between Italy and the Baltic Sea region as well as to offer additional national transfer options to and from Kiel. With the PORT OF KIEL, there is also great potential for the further expansion of efficient rail connections." What is new in Kiel is that the trains to and from Italy - just like the existing CT shuttle to and from Hamburg - now also connect directly to the Ostuferhafen in addition to the Schwedenkai, thus also offering direct options for onward loading to the Baltic region and the Swedish south and east coasts.

The five additional train pairs have a length of 540 m approved for Alpine transit via the Brenner Pass and each have 20 wagons for transporting 20 trailers and 20 containers up to 30 feet. The trains leave Kiel in the evening so that cargo units in Lehrte can be transferred to other destinations during the night. In the opposite direction, containers and trailers from the various routes and the Hanover/Braunschweig economic area are loaded in Lehrte and then shipped on via Kiel to destinations in Norway, Sweden and the Baltic States. The shipping companies Stena Line (to Gothenburg), Color Line (to Oslo) and DFDS (to Klaipeda) offer daily ferry departures from Kiel. There are also two round trips a week with SCA Logistics to the Swedish south and east coast (to Malmö and Sundsvall as well as to Umea and Iggesund).

The port of Kiel is registering a steadily growing number of unaccompanied cargo units that are loaded onto the ferries. Thanks to the connection via Lehrte, the pre- and post-carriage can now be carried out to an even greater extent by rail and therefore more sustainably. Compared to transport via freeways, rail freight transport reduces emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) by an average of 57 grams per tonne-kilometre in the pre- and onward carriage. On the Kiel - Verona route, this saves around 1.4 tons of CO2 per load unit with a load weight of 20 tons. Dirk Claus: "Shifting traffic to rail is a declared goal of our Blue Port strategy and supports the efforts of the shipping industry to achieve greater sustainability in transportation. The new trains can save up to 28,000 tons of CO2 per year."

Kiel is already connected to Kombiverkehr's national and European network in combined transport with the weekday CT shuttle via Hamburg-Billwerder. In addition, there are three direct departures per week and direction to and from Bettembourg in Luxembourg. On the route to and from Italy, there are now a total of six weekly connections to choose from, five of which are via Hanover Lehrte. More than 100,000 unaccompanied trailers and containers are handled in the port of Kiel every year. Around a third of these are already transported by rail in port hinterland traffic. The connection via the MegaHub Lehrte will create capacity for the environmentally friendly transportation of 20,000 additional freight units.