Turku Eastern Landbridge - a green bridge to the east via Turku

The only train ferry harbour in Finland, Turku provides a wide variety of services and aims at promoting the continuous growth of train ferry traffic. Rail traffic is continuously being developed, because environmental safety will increase the importance of train ferry traffic a great deal in the future. An important development project is the Eastern Landbridge, the logistics corridor reaching from Stockholm via Turku to Russia that ties together the market areas of Scandinavia and Russia. The co-operation partners in the project in addition to the Ports of Turku and Stockholm are Green Cargo AB, CargoNet, SeaRail Oy and VR Cargo.

The eastward foreign trade of Sweden and all of Scandinavia has grown vigorously in recent years. The route via Turku offers a competitive alternative, based on high-quality services and traffic frequency with a number of additional features. Turku is a logical choice for a train ferry harbour, as it is located in a geographically favourable junction from the point of view of the rest of Europe. Both the road and rail network extend seamlessly from the port of Turku to other parts of Finland and further to the east.

The Eastern Landbridge (TEL) project is based on the abovementioned facts. It has attracted a great deal of interest in Sweden in many fields, such as forest industry and companies importing from China and Korea. The capacity of the junction rails between the Port of Stockholm and the Swedish rail network was doubled to serve the growing and developing traffic.

The Port of Turku has built a  transfer loading terminal in the port together with SeaRail Oy, and thanks to the terminal building, most of the loading can be done indoors. There are railway tracks for both European and Finnish track gauges. The transferloading terminal has significantly enhanced train ferry traffic services and increased the capacity.

"If the importance of the Port of Turku to VR is examined in terms of cross-border traffic, Turku is an important node. In terms of traffic for international VR Cargo, Turku is another nerve-centre of westward traffic in addition to Tornio. In practice, all our westward traffic is concentrated in those two."

Timo Mäntylä, Key Account Manager, European Traffic, VR Cargo