July 23 (SeeNews) - Danish logistics company A.P. Moller-Maersk said it started to offer cargo block train services in both directions, import and export, from the port of Burgas, on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, to Bulgaria's second-largest city of Plovdiv, as of July 22.
With the new service, A.P. Moller-Maersk is connecting the Bulgarian capital of Sofia with a daily truck shuttle, it said in a statement on Thursday.
"Maersk size and presence in Bulgaria gives us a unique position to strengthen the logistics landscape in the country. We have offered our customer not just changing from truck to rail but connecting rail to their supply chains in a way that presents additional value to their logistics and business," Sedef Ayhan, managing director for the region of Europe and the Middle East at Maersk, said in the statement.
According to the statement, JYSK Bulgaria, a unit of Danish bedding and furniture retailer JYSK, and Bulgarian packaging and paper company Mondi Paper are the first to engage this new service in the country.
"This service is key for us to increase supply chain resilience and agility through the current challenging times. By including rail, we save 40 km from Burgas to Sofia. The fact that the rail travels by night and gathers big lots helps us to get better transit times and overall, we reduce carbon dioxide emissions in our supply chain," Jaroslaw Sobczyk, logistics director of JYSK Bulgaria, said.
Copenhagen-based A.P. Moller-Maersk is an integrated container logistics company working to connect and simplify its customers’ supply chains. As the global leader in shipping services, the company operates in 130 countries and employs approximately 80,000 people, the company said.