East China’s Jiangsu province has made every effort to implement General Secretary Xi Jinping's series of important instructions and directives on the development of China-Europe freight trains, as well as the decisions and deployments of the Party Central Committee and the State Council by continuously expanding channel routes, actively exploring characteristic freight trains, and creating China-Europe freight trains as a golden logistics transportation channel so as to have contributed to serving the country’s promotion of a new development pattern.
At the Yaohuamen Railway Freight Yard in Nanjing, 261 brand-new domestic commodity cars were loaded into the carriages of the China-Europe freight train, ready to be exported to Kazakhstan. Similar to this, commodity vehicle specialized trains with convenient loading and unloading, high carrying capacity, and high safety has become the main force in the transportation of Jiangsu China-Europe freight trains.
“Each carriage is interconnected to enable loading to be completed in three and a half hours. Each carriage can hold 10 units, and each container typically holds 3 to 4 units”, said Jiang Zhaogang, Manager of Nanjing Office of Car Rail Logistics (Shanghai) Co., Ltd.
“On average, we send out about 5 freight trains per month, ranking first in the country and providing significant assistance to exports in Jiangsu and even the Yangtze River Delta region”, said Wei Xiandi, General Manager of Jiangsu Banlie Supply Chain Co., Ltd.
The Jiangsu China-Europe freight train has achieved stable operation in five starting cities including Nanjing, Xuzhou, Suzhou, Lianyungang, and Nantong. From January to August, Jiangsu China-Europe Asia Express operated 1504 trains, a year-on-year increase of 13.8%, setting the best level in history for the same period, and becoming an important support for promoting sustained economic recovery and improvement.
Nanjing has opened customized special trains, allowing enterprises to place orders and charter vehicles in advance and choose their destinations. Suzhou has opened special trains for cross-border e-commerce and second-hand car exports for small and medium-sized enterprises. Xuzhou pioneered cold-chain container transportation. Wuxi and Yancheng have opened continuous trains to allow local enterprises to load and ship goods on the local tracks.
“In July, we shipped 340 TEUs with a value of 47.6 million yuan, maintaining a good growth momentum and helping more and more Wuxi manufacturers to move towards the ‘Belt and Road’ countries”, Teng Ben, Marketing Manager of Wuxi International Freight Train Co., Ltd., said.
At Lianyungang, the "Eastern Bridgehead" of the New Eurasian Continental Bridge, a more flexible and convenient transportation system for water, car, and rail transportation ensures that goods flow continuously from east to west on this golden logistics channel.
In order to improve the efficiency of transportation, an information management network connecting customs, ports, railways, yards, China-Europe freight train carriers, freight forwarders, and various nodes along the line has accelerated the formation, promoting information sharing and data transmission exchange and making "fast customs clearance" a reality.
In the meantime, the system innovation of customs supervision such as "direct pick-up at the ship station" and zero waiting has greatly compressed the transit time of goods, amplifying Lianyungang's advantage in the source of the country’s return cargo.
“The transit potassium fertilizer from Uzbekistan is directly unloaded and diverted to the container terminal upon its arrival at the Sino-Kazakhstan logistics cooperation base through the China-Europe freight train. Under customs supervision, it is directly unloaded, unpacked, and loaded, achieving the complete non-landing of the goods. We use this model to ensure the rapid transit of potassium fertilizer in Central Asia so as to continuously improve customs clearance efficiency”, said Wang Daolong, Deputy Director of the Lianyungang Customs Office in the Port Area.
As of now, Jiangsu has stably operated 24 freight train routes in Central Europe and Asia, connecting nearly 80 international stations in 26 countries in Europe, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia.
From January to August, the China-Europe freight train in Jiangsu transported 21.214 billion yuan of goods, a year-on-year increase of 13.6%, becoming a strong link for Jiangsu to deepen the "Belt and Road" cooperation, and providing strong support for building a two-way open hub with world convergence.
