Fret SNCF replaced by Hexafret and Technis after EU state aid probe

Lire en français : Fin de Fret SNCF : Hexafret, Technis, 23 flux cédés, 53 locomotives

Fret SNCF no longer exists. Since 1 January 2025 its business has been split between Hexafret, a wagonload operator with 4,000 staff, and Technis, a locomotive maintenance company with 500, both inside SNCF's Rail Logistics Europe group. To settle an EU state aid investigation, SNCF handed 23 freight flows to competitors and put locomotives up for sale.

The break-up was the price of a European Commission state aid investigation opened in January 2023. According to Groupe SNCF, the investigation found that Fret SNCF had received EUR 5.3bn of illegal public aid between 2007 and 2019. The French government's answer, set out in May 2023, was a "discontinuity" plan: the old company shrinks and disappears, and the new ones do not inherit the obligation to repay.

An earlier version of this article described the locomotive sales as the result of a Commission ruling. They are part of the discontinuity plan, which SNCF says was imposed by the Commission, not of a separate ruling.

What Hexafret and Technis took over

Hexafret runs 1,100 long-distance trains a week and serves 1,300 industrial and logistics sites in France and Europe, SNCF says. Its core is wagonload, the business of collecting single wagons from many customers and marshalling them into trains. Technis maintains locomotives for Hexafret, for other Rail Logistics Europe companies and for outside customers. Ninety per cent of Fret SNCF's employees moved to the two firms, and their combined turnover was targeted above EUR 700m in 2025.

The price was paid in traffic and traction. Fret SNCF handed 23 freight flows to competitors, and SNCF expected to dispose of 53 locomotives as a result, International Railway Journal reported. A first batch of ten BB 27000 dual-voltage Prima electrics, built by Alstom in 2002-03, was offered at online auction on Agorastore in November 2025, with other SNCF subsidiaries barred from bidding. GCA Traction, which took over some former Fret SNCF services, had already bought four.

Public money continues in a different form. The French state committed EUR 370m a year from 2025 to the rail freight sector in operating and track access aid, plus EUR 30m a year for single wagonload, according to SNCF.

Revenue up, wagonload still fragile

Rail Logistics Europe, the holding above Hexafret, reported revenue of EUR 948m in the first half of 2026, up 3.9% like for like, and EBITDA of EUR 118m, a 12.5% margin against 12.0% a year earlier, SNCF said in its half-year results on 28 July. It described Hexafret's activity as rising on sustained volumes, without giving figures.

Wagonload remains the weak point: it is costly to run because each wagon needs shunting and marshalling, and it depends on state aid, which the CGT union points out is not guaranteed from one budget year to the next.

France's freight market keeps shifting meanwhile, as our rail freight news section follows. The next step is the sale of further batches from the 53 locomotives SNCF expects to dispose of, after the first ten were offered at auction, as reported by International Railway Journal.

Sources: Groupe SNCF, Hexafret and Technis (updated 16/05/2025); Rail Logistics Europe; Groupe SNCF, half-year results (28/07/2026); International Railway Journal, locomotive sale; CGT Cheminots (01/06/2026).

Photo: an SNCF BB 27000 hauling a freight train at Montmélian, Savoie, in March 2019. Florian Pépellin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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