Hermes Project
ICL Iberia is actively participating in a European project, HERMES, which aims to optimize the design of a new freight railroad wagon that will be made of new materials in order to improve its loading factor and that will utilize a new monitoring system. The project also includes a new loading and unloading facility to optimize product transport and to improve competitiveness and efficiency. The three-year, nearly $8 million project is being funded by the EU as part of its Mobility for Growth “Smart Rail” (MG2.2) Horizon 2020 program. \
ICL is participating in this project as part of a consortium of companies, research centers and universities in France, Sweden, Denmark and Spain. Work has also focused on eliminating drawbacks to bulk transport by rail in Europe, and designing highly modular wagons that can be adapted to different goods within minutes. These wagons are planned to become suitable for over 90% of the European rail network, allowing for a 50% higher load capacity, modular and scalable unloading capacity and reducing dusting during unloading. The unloading station has been designed to be simple, robust and to improve unloading times by 80%.
