The Ibizas, Leons and Cordobas roll quickly over the large ramp to their parking spaces on the SEAT car transporter train, which is almost 400 meters long and has space for 170 vehicles. Two to three times a day, a diesel locomotive pulls the empty freight cars to the SEAT plant in Martorell. A few hours later, fully loaded and on schedule, it departs on its one-hour journey to the port of Barcelona, from where the brand-new SEAT models are shipped throughout the world.

Manuel Medina stands on the tracks and watches the cars being loaded. “I always enjoy coming here”, he says, “a lot of passion went into this.” Medina, who is responsible for distribution planning, is one of the hard core team that supported the train project from the beginning – despite a lot of the skepticism: “When we presented our plan to the port authority, we had to do a lot of convincing.”

The people in charge have since changed their position. And SEAT has even won the “Outstanding Loader 2008” award for the initiative, which entails switching new car transportation from the Martorell plant to the port of Barcelona from road to rail. This is the second award that SEAT’s new car transporter train has won: in 2007 the project – which was still under construction – was named the “Best Logistics Initiative” of the year at the International Logistics & Material Handling Exhibition (SIL) in Barcelona. Both prizes were accepted by SEAT’s logistics director, Juan Ramón Rodríguez. “We were pioneers in this area”, says Rodríguez, “because we believe in the potential of rail as an economically viable means of transport”. He produces a map of Barcelona and the surrounding area, highlighting the central access roads and their capacity limits. Almost all of them are at well over 100 percent. “Five years ago”, explains Rodríguez, “it sometimes took our trucks eight hours to travel the 70 kilometers from the plant to the port and back. Instead of the three return trips we do today, we could often only manage one.”