entry Nov 2008
The Freight Village in Nola
I was
not familiar with the term “freight village.”
According to information from the European Intermodal
Association, it is
… a defined area within which all activities relating to transport, logistics and the distribution of goods, both for national and international transit, are carried out by various operators…these operators can either be owners or tenants of buildings and facilities (warehouses, break-bulk centres, storage areas, offices, car parks, etc.)…[and the area]…must preferably be served by a multiplicity of transport modes (road, rail, deep sea, inland waterway, air).
The
general Italian term for “freight village” is interporto; the
abbreviation CIS (for Consorzio
Intercomunale Servizi) is also used. Both are
used to refer to the gigantic freight village in Nola,
near Naples. It is one of the largest
such facilities among the dozens in Europe. It is essentially a
small city of warehouses and wholesalers, a central
point for the collection and repackaging of freight that
has arrived by land, air or sea. Nola is close to both
the Naples
airport, the main
train station, the port of Naples
and is on the main
north-south Italian highway system.
The
CIS Nola opened in 1986. The term “village” lends
an unwarranted pre-industrial quaintness to the place,
as if there were peasants scurrying about taking care of
steam engines and spinning looms. In reality, the
"village" covers about one million square meters, half
of which is given over to covered areas of warehouses,
shops and facilities such as restaurants, banks, an ER,
a sports field, a post office, a filling station and a
police station for the 4,000 employees, who work in the
325 wholesale shops distributed on eight “islands” in
the complex. The entire complex includes the large Vulcano
Buono retail shopping center (just out of the
bottom of the picture in the above image).
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