Trains from Asia to Europe, a DB success

Posted on October 1, 2008 by Matthieu Desiderio

The January 2008 DB Schenker trial which consisted in running a freight train from China to Germany turned out to be a real success. Trans Eurasia, the DB Schenker branch in charge of the whole scheme, has already been requested by many companies to handle their volumes. According to Harmut Albers, head of Trans Eurasia, the demand amounts more than a hundred of clients. The craze for the project is so that the DB brought forward to 2009 (instead of 2010) the date for the implementation of regular shuttles between both countries. Talks are currently held with some of the companies that showed interests to discuss feasibility matters.

However, even though these are encouraging prospects, only trials are run and the price of the transport service may be deterrent for some businesses. Moreover, before volumes are allocated to train to cover this distance, administrative issues will first have to be addressed. Also, critics said the main limit for the project to impose as a viable alternative to sea transit lies on its limited capacity.

Computers shipped by trains from South China to North Germany

Fujitsu-Siemens Computers in collaboration with the DB Schenker is running a dedicated one-off train from China to Germany. The train left Xiangtang (700 km northern Hong-Kong) on September, 19 with about 50,000 computer monitors and mobile phones in 50 containers (40 ft ones). The expected transit time is 18 days. Moreover, the experimentation brings new market prospects since the lead time to Moscow becomes 13 days.

Note that, rail European network standards don’t allow long trains (roughly more than 700 metres). Therefore, as the train is operated at its full length of 1,000 metres, at the Belarusian border, it will be split in order to comply with the smaller measures of tracks and more restricted length standards.

From company’s viewpoint, train appears as a trade-off between cost and speed. According to Fujitsu-Siemmens director of logistics, air freight is admittedly fast enough, but too expensive to be a sustainable option. On the contrary, deepsea shipping is too slow to keep up with the demand of the computer retail sector. Also, the loss of value of goods in containers is estimated to €5 to €10 on a 28-35 days transit time from China by sea. This argument is all the more sensitive that Fujitsu-Siemens deals with goods likely to date quite quickly.

In short, the rail costs 25% of the air and is 10 days shorter than sea. Therefore, the company is urging Trans Eurasia to launch regular weekly – even bi-weekly – train services to Europe.

Cars will be crossing over Siberia

Mazda recently declared the company is giving up its current transport plan for its vehicles intended to the Russian market in favour of the Trans Eurasia service. Instead of being shipped by sea from Japan (Hiroshima) to Germany (Bremerhaven) and being then carried by road up to Moscow, cars will be directly sent by rail to the Russian capital from Zarubino (near Vladivostock), where the vehicles will have been beforehand transported by sea from Hiroshima. Wagons used for that specific type of transport will be fully-covered and double-decked ones.

In total, the transit time is expected to go down from 40 to 10 days. It is to note that as far as vehicles bound for West European countries, the current transport organisation will be kept.

References

Article: Deepsea is too slow for hi-tech shipments Demand for high-speed delivery from China leads to launch of trans-Siberian box-train (James Falkner), Information Freight Weekly, Sep. 26, 2008
Article: Les Mazda iront à Moscou en train – Le constructeur japonais va innover pour le transport de ses autos à destination du marché russe, Moteur Nature, Sep. 28, 2008: here
Article: La DB circule en Chine, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Financial Times Deutschland, Sep. 20, 2008
Article: La DB veut faire circuler des trains réguliers entre l’Allemagne et la Chine dès 2009, Associated Press Worldstream, Sep. 4, 2008

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