Business news

MINSK, 6 May (BelTA) – A pilot container train loaded with Belarus-made products has left the Belarusian city of Smorgon for China, the press service of Belarusian Railways told BelTA.

The train left the Belarusian city of Smorgon for the Chinese city of Chengdu on 6 May. The train is loaded with fiberboards and laminated flooring made by the Smorgon-based company IOOO Kronospan.

The project has been arranged by the Belarusian Railways enterprise Belintertrans — Transport-Logistics Center (BTLC) in association with IOOO Kronospan. BTLC has been working together with Kronospan since 2016, offering transport and forwarding services for transporting freight in covered train cars to Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan.

The container train comprises 41 double-stack cars loaded with 40-feet containers. The train will have to cross about 10,000km within 12 days. To compare, it takes 45-60 days to deliver container cargo from China to Europe by sea.

Belarusian Railways considers the development of cargo transportation by container trains between Belarus and China as a strategic priority. Cargoes are delivered by rail fast. The container trains get green light all the way. They travel for 1,160km per day on the average and for 1,400km per day in some areas. It is the best result among the railway networks in the CIS and Baltic states, noted the source.

It was noted during the sendoff ceremony that favorable conditions for increasing the transportation of Belarusian exports to China have been enabled. Standard containers with Belarusian products will be delivered to specific stations where they will be attached to the container trains that regularly shuttle between the European Union and China. As a result of an arrangement with Russian Railways it will be more convenient to ship Belarusian exports to various parts of China. Belarusian companies can now deliver their cargoes fast (two weeks at most) to various parts of China in addition to offering a broad range of transportation services, logistics services, information services, and other kinds of services.

Work is in progress to arrange the transportation of Belarusian food in special refrigerator containers using similar schemes. Since Belarusian agricultural and food companies can potentially export more merchandise to China, Belarusian Railways is busy negotiating better terms with the railway administrations of Russia and Kazakhstan for the sake of offering attractive conditions for delivering food in refrigerated containers.

Cargoes are transported to and from China via Belarus using fast transit container trains. Cargoes are also transported in accordance with the foreign trade contracts signed by Belarusian industrial enterprises and organizations.

In January-March 2017 as many as 45,100 containers full of cargoes were transported between the European Union and China via Belarus using container trains, 160% up from the same period of last year.