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Silk Road drives growth as China-Med rail time falls to 11 days

TRANSIT times between eastern China and new markets opening up to the Middle East and Mediterranean have fallen to 11-12 days, as European forwarding and third-party logistics providers (3PLs) rely more heavily on rail services between Asia and Europe.

A spokesman for DB Schenker told Lloyd's Loading List transit times to Europe from multiple destinations in Asia were consistently improving as customs became more efficient and delays less frequent.

"Transit time is decreasing fast," he said. "When we started with Chongqing-Duisburg in 2012, there was a terminal-to-terminal time of 19 days. Nowadays we calculate at 12 days on the same route. Similar trends can be observed on all the usual rail lanes on the Trans-Eurasian corridor."

The company currently offers services from across China as well as multimodal connections to and from Korea, Japan and Vietnam, but new southern routes are also gradually being developed.

"We have already started to do this and will follow the further development of the 'One Belt One Road' initiative to the Middle East and Black Sea regions," he said.

DHL anticipates its rail services from Asia to Europe will rise twofold, or even threefold, by 2020. The company is also looking at new routes and improved transit times.

According to the head of DHL's value-added services division in China, Zafer Engin, tests have shown that transit times from eastern China to Europe's borders of 11 days were already feasible, and more gains would be possible if trains moving through China could be speeded up.

The company is now also exploring routes via Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. "China to Turkey is achievable, the Turkish government just needs to complete a 75-kilometre section of rail between Turkey and Georgia. At the moment we transfer by truck, but we need a cross-border rail connection, which will be finished soon.

"From Turkey we can truck within 6-12 hours to the Balkans, Macedonia, Romania and Bulgaria. We also see Azerbaijan as having good potential. We can do China to Baku in around 10 days."

Mr Engin added: "Another promising lane is to Iran, which will be a prime market from China. A trial train has already been run. As I understand it, we just need political alignment on border and transport documents and the governments are already working on it, so this will be a promising market in the near future."

Like DHL, DB Schenker is forecasting an accelerating expansion in rail volumes between Asia and Europe.

"Our target is to continue the exceptional growth rate of the past and to triple our volumes on the Silk Road routes," said a company spokesman.

"DB-driven initiatives like the unified CIM/SMGS railway bill, the General Terms and Conditions 'TransEurasia' and further digitalisation of operations, documentation and customs will support the general idea of the New Silk Road initiative."