Due to the shortage of lorry drivers and concerns about CO2 emissions, a growing number of British, but also French, German and Spanish companies are using rail freight. According to the owners of the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal (DIRFT), this is their busiest Christmas ever. A spokesman for GB Rail freight also said that it has trained 70 new train drivers in its Peterborough centre in the last 12 months.
DIRFT employs nine thousand people and another four thousand in January, when a new terminal is opened. Paul Weston, the owner of the terminal Prologis UK, said that supermarkets have increased the number of trains using the centre: “we have services from France, Spain and Germany, but there is also a lot of traffic from the UK from major ports such as Felixstowe and Southampton.”
