SNCF Proximites, which is responsible for regional passenger services, reported a 10.1% overall increase in turnover to Euros 12.32bn in 2011 compared with Euros 11.2bn in 2010. Keolis accounted for around a third of this growth following particularly strong performance of its British, Swedish and Australian passenger operations. Inter-city services accounted for a quarter of the overall increase following a new agreement reached with government. And following a difficult start to the year due to a series of engineering works, SNCF Passenger, which operates the TGV network, also fared well rebounding to report a 5.5% increase in turnover to Euros 7.3bn.
However, it was a different story for freight. Despite reporting a 6% overall increase to Euros 9.43bn, growth had practically come to a halt during the second half of 2011 due to the poor performance of SNCF Geodis' road and freight forwarding services, which reported respective losses of 5.1% and 7.8%.
