EU green light for Msc to enter Italo's capital

Then there is the Itabus company, acquired by Italo in May 2023. The number of buses making up the Itabus fleet, currently 100, is also set to grow (on this point, however, La Rocca did not give precise figures). High-speed trains and buses for long-distance travel: with the entry into Italo of Msc, the world's leading cargo line operator and one of the largest cruise ship companies, the first multimodal group in Europe is born.

The shareholder Msc will facilitate the integration of shipping routes, trains and buses. But it is an agreement that could also open up hitherto unexplored possibilities in the logistics and goods transport sector: Msc, as well as managing maritime cargo lines worldwide, is also present in the air cargo sector, where it has recently acquired a majority shareholding in AlisCargo Airlines, a company based in Milan, and in rail freight transport, with the company Medway, a competitor among others of Mercitalia (the cargo company of the FS group). For Italo, therefore, there would be the suggestion of adding high-speed passenger transport to high-capacity freight transport. But this is a matter still in the making.

Diego Aponte, President of Msc, opens up to all these possibilities: "This agreement demonstrates our long-standing commitment to Italy and support for high-speed passenger rail transport in the country. We strongly believe in Italo's potential to further strengthen rail connectivity throughout Italy, but also in the domestic tourism market. Furthermore, today's agreement also reflects our group's objective to further develop sustainable modes of transport, both for passengers and freight".

Ntv, today's Italo, was the first entirely private operator to break the monopoly of FS on the high-speed network. It was a unique model in Europe, studied all over the world and taken as an example by the countries that subsequently liberalised the market. Thanks to the introduction of competition, with the arrival of Ntv in Italy, demand for high-speed rail increased by 100% and prices decreased by 50%.

In 2020, the transport sector was strongly affected by the arrival of the Covid. Italo, due to travel restrictions between the different regions, went through a very complicated period, forced to practically zero its connections. Despite the difficulties and the reduction in traffic on the most popular routes before the pandemic, Italo decided to bet on the future, increasing and diversifying its network, thus beginning to expand in the South, serving an area of the country with great demand for quality rail transport. Connections to Calabria and Cilento were inaugurated, while in the summer of 2021 Italo convoys landed in Puglia, Caserta and Benevento. New destinations also in the North: arrival in Trieste, then Trieste Airport and finally Genoa.