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Kazakhstan railway moves 61pc more Asia-Europe boxes in 2013

THE Kazakhstan Temir Zholy railway moved 16 million tonnes of cargo last year, with container volume increasing four per cent year on year, said company president Askar Mamin.

Container volume came to 270,000 TEU, with transit box traffic flow between Asia and Europe through Kazakhstan reaching 5,630 TEU, which is 61 per cent more than the 3,490 TEU the railway carried in 2012, reports Almaty-based Tengriunews.kz.

"The shipments were made using high-speed container trains running on fixed schedules with an average speed of 997 kilometres per day. And at some sections - Chongqing-Dostyk-Duisburg and Chengdu-Dostyk-Lodzin - their speed reached 1,100 kilometres per day," Mr Mamin said.

There were 1,653 container trains running in Kazakhstan in 2013 - five a day - 24 per cent more than in 2012.

The railway is developing new regular container trains between Xian and the Kazakhstani border launched in December 2013. Three more high-speed trains routes - Xian, Uzbekistan via Kazakhstan, Shenzhen, Kazakhstan and Lianyungang, also via Kazakhstan will be running later this year.

There are plans to increase the container train traffic in Kazakhstan by another 20 per cent in 2014.

The railway expects rail freight traffic between Kazakhstan and China to reach 21.5 million tonnes in 2014, with 17.5 million tonnes going through Kazakhstan's Dostyk railway border crossing and four million tonnes via Chinese Altynkol crossing.