For Papierholz Austria, the ÖBB Rail Cargo Group (RCG) transported a total of 1.4 million tons of wood by rail in 2025. The delivered wood is processed into pulp and wood pulp at the shareholder factories of the wood procurement company, which is primarily used for paper production.
The wood transport by RCG could have saved nearly 34,000 tons of CO2 in 2024, it is said. The companies associated with Papierholz Austria include the Heinzel Pöls woodworks (Styria), Mondi Frantschach (Carinthia), Sappi
Gratkorn (Styria), and Norske Skog Bruck (Styria).
The procurement company acts as a link between forest owners and the wood processing industry. RCG takes on the transport of wood chips and round wood on behalf of Papierholz Austria.
Around 40,000 freight cars are handled annually via the company's own siding tracks, with the trend rising. However, the partnership between the two companies has existed for a long time.
"A major milestone in our company history was the start of woodchip transport with
block trains 20 years ago. We now handle up to 900 block trains per year together with the ÖBB Rail Cargo Group," explains Andreas Kogler, Managing Director of Papierholz Austria.
Over the years, the collaboration has been further expanded, focusing on and optimizing the entire transport from the forest through the loader to the transporter. In 2009, as a joint pilot project, a special container tipping system was developed at the Heinzel Pöls plant to facilitate woodchip unloading.
Gain a Digital Overview
According to ÖBB RCG, one must remain flexible in the future in view of current challenges such as climate change and extreme weather events.
In the future, empty car orders, transport orders, and shipment tracking will be directly managed from Papierholz Austria's own system—made possible by RCG's digital logistics platform named Mike.
This aims to simplify the exchange over Excel lists, emails, phone calls, or additional system accesses and enable seamless data exchange for all transports. Processing via Mike connects all interfaces
