The Regional Council of Kainuu has contributed to development of east-west transport corridors by implementing Northern Axis -Barents Link project funded by Kolarctic CBC Program. One of the bottlenecks of the corridor is limited capacity of Ofotbanen – Malmbanen railway between Sweden and Norway.
The Ofotbanen-Malmbanan line is about 500 km long starting in Luleå (Sweden) and ending in the port of Narvik. Ofotbanen – Malmbanen is the only railway link from Northern Finland to Arctic Ocean with existing infrastructure and it became a part of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) during the last extension process.
According to the result of last study implemented in cooperation with Norwegian partners from Narvik, the Ofotbanen and Malmbanen have a great potential for improvement. Increasing the capacity and availability of the line would result in goods being shifted from road to rail. In addition to Norwegian and Swedish companies, Northern Finland companies could also potentially use the transport corridor in their own supply chains.
The study is available in Norwegian, with an English summary.
