Press Release

Nippon Express greatly expands China-Europe cross-border rail transport services

Rail transport services on Eurasian continent to be unified under the name "Eurasia Train Direct"

Nippon Express (China) Co., Ltd. (Tatsuo Sugiyama, President), a local subsidiary of Nippon Express Co., Ltd. (Mitsuru Saito, President), and Nippon Express (Europe) Co., Ltd. (Shigeru Umino, President) will be substantially expanding the cities served and the transport routes used in their China-Europe cross-border rail transport services.

Rail transport on the Eurasian continent will be unified under the name "Eurasia Train Direct"*1, and new routes will be developed to bolster sales.

The two companies began offering full container load (FCL) service in November 2015 and consolidated transport (LCL) service in August 2016, and the cities at which cargo is handled have been expanded as follows (outlined in red)

FCL Service Routes

  • 【Westbound】
    Departure station Arrival station
    Chengdu Lodz (Poland), Nuremberg (Germany), Tilburg (Netherlands)
    Wuhan Malaszewice (Poland), Hamburg (Germany), Duisburg (Germany), Moscow (Russia), Malaszewice (Poland)
    Chongqing Malaszewice, Duisburg, Cherkessk (Russia)
    Yiwu Malaszewice, Duisburg, Madrid (Spain)
    Suzhou Warsaw (Poland)
    Shenyang Warsaw, Hamburg
    Changchun Malaszewice, Hamburg
    Xian Malaszewice, Hamburg
    Harbin Duisbung
  • 【Eastbound】
    Departure station Arrival station
    Hamburg (Germany) Zhengzhou, Wuhan, Chongqing, Harbin
    Duisburg (Germany) Wuhan, Chongqing
    Brest (Belarus) Shenyang,Suzhou
    Munich (Germany) Wuhan, Chongqing
    Budapest (Hungary) Wuhan, Chongqing
    Lodz (Poland) Chengdu
    Madrid (Spain) Yiwu
    Nuremburg (Germany) Chengdu, Wuhan, Chongqing
    Tilburg (Netherlands) Chengdu, Wuhan, Chongqing

LCL Service Routes

  • 【Westbound】
    Departure station Arrival station
    Wuhan Hamburg (Germany), Duisburg
    (Germany), Ostrava (Czech Republic), Prague (Czech Republic)
    Ningbo Warsaw (Poland), Duisburg
    Zhengzhou, Chongqing, Chengdu, Changsha Ostrava, Prague
    Hefei Ostrava, Prague, Warsaw
    Tianjin, Qingdao, Jinan, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Foshan, Fuzhou, Xiamen Warsaw
  • 【Eastbound】
    Departure station Arrival station
    Hamburg (Germany) Suzhou, Changzhou, Chengdu, Chongqing, Hangzhou, Huangyan (Taizhou), Jiangyin (Wuxi),
    IJinhua, Maanshan, Nanjing, Nantong, Ningbo,Shanghai, Wenzhou, Wuhan, Yangzhou, Zhangjiagang
    Duisburg (Germany) Chongqing

Cities where services are available

  1. FCL
    (Shipments from China)
    Services heretofore available at Wuhan, Chongqing, and Harbin will now also be available at Chengdu, Xian, Yiwu (seen as a potentially huge production site for miscellaneous goods in Zhejiang Province) and elsewhere.
    (Shipments from Europe)
    Services heretofore available only at Duisburg will now be accessible in other European cities, including Brest (Belarus), Madrid (Spain), and Budapest (Hungary).
  2. LCL
    (Shipments from China)
    Previously concentrated on Wuhan, these services will now be available in the Huadong area (where Shanghai, Wuxi, Ningbo, and other cities host numerous Japanese companies), the northern industrial city of Tianjin, Qingdao, and the Huanan area (Guangzhou, Dongguan, Zhongshan, etc.).
    (Shipments from Europe)
    Services heretofore available only at Duisburg will now also be accessible at Hamburg.
  3. Common benefits
    • Expanding the service areas of both FCL and LCL allows cargo, regardless of volume,
         to be loaded onto a block train from a cargo rail station near the customer,
         a suitable transport route to be selected, and transport lead time and cost to be reduced.
          For example, shipments of cargo from Zhejiang Province to Spain have heretofore been transported by
         rail from Wuhan (China) to Duisburg (Germany), with long-distance drayage carried out from there.
         Using rail transport between Yiwu (China) and Madrid (Spain) from here on will cut door-to-door freight by    about 30%.
    • The Nippon Express Group truck transport networks in both China and Europe will be used in combination
         to enable the Group to provide door-to-door transport between customers' locations at origin and
         destination.

System enhancements for product development and sales expansion

  • In October 2016, Nippon Express (China) Co., Ltd., organized a Cross-border Transport Development Team (comprising two Japanese, one Chinese, one Russian, and one Kazakh employee) that has worked on the development of a variety of cross-border transport products.
  • A Rail Transport Sales Expansion Team of about 30 employees mainly from local subsidiaries in China and Hong Kong and other Group companies has also been put together to devise services linking up to air and ocean cargo transport.

Background to product development

  • China over the past few years has been steadily promoting its Belt and Road Initiative as one of the country's most important policies, and a Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation attended by the leaders of 28 countries/regions was held in Beijing from May 14 to May 16.
  • In addition, the State Council of the People's Republic of China has announced a goal for transcontinental rail transport connecting China and Europe of 5,000 block trains per year running from 43 cities in China by 2020.
  • Expanding trade between China and Europe is giving rise to a wide range of logistics needs. Nippon Express offers rail transport as an intermediate product between air cargo transport and ocean cargo transport, and it will be actively seeking to meet new needs by enhancing services that are cheaper than air transport and faster than ocean shipment.

1 The service is labeled "Eurasia Train Direct (China-Europe)" for transport from China to Europe