United Transport and Logistics Company – Eurasian Railway Alliance (UTLC ERA JSC), “Kaliningrad Railway” – a branch of “Russian Railways” JSC, “Kaliningrad Sea Trade Port” JSC (KSTP JSC) and “Belintertrans-Germany” LLC have sent the pilot trains from Kaliningrad to Chengdu as a part of the multimodal transportation development project through the ports of the Kaliningrad region in China – Europe communication.
Two full trains with containers arrived by sea from Rotterdam were sent from the Kaliningrad port through Dostyk to Chengdu on November 7, 2018.
“The results of the pilot shipment are yet to be analyzed. We would like to thank our partners – Kaliningrad Railway and Kaliningrad Sea Trade Port. It is worth mentioning that the technology of container trains combining has been applied and has been confirmed by our colleagues. UTLC ERA has been using the combined trains (XL-train) since 2017, which make it possible to use the railways capacity in an optimal way, to reduce costs, to increase efficiency and profitability for the carriers in the first place,” Alexey Grom, the President of UTLC ERA, notes. “In general, the cooperation of the EEU rail carriers, the ports of Kaliningrad and Baltiysk, the container shipping lines and UTLC ERA as a container trains operator on the 1520 mm gauge is aimed at offering customers a new transport and logistics service which will be competitive by optimal transit time and cost.”
“We believe that the multimodal transportation in the context of the container transit transportation increase has great prospects and can serve as a good complement to the basic land routes. We are yet to improve the technology, to analyze the readiness of the transport and logistics service, – Alexey Grom says. – The first multimodal container transportation through the Kaliningrad port is the completion of a large amount of work on a new service launching. Nowadays, transit trains through the overland terminals of Kaliningrad along the route China – Europe – China are regularly running. “Kaliningrad” Universal Transport and Logistics Center works at the Dzerzhinskaya-Novaya station, and starting from November 2018 we receive and send three pairs of trains a week at this station.”
Background information
The total freight traffic volume in UTLC ERA service for 10 months this year has reached 214 thousand TEUs. The volume is 57% more than during the same period in 2017, when 136 thousand TEUs were transported. In October 2018, UTLC ERA transported 28.22 thousand TEUs. The company manages a fleet of fitting vagons, which is about 4 thousand units in number, 85% of which are long-base 80-foot vagons. Every day up to 15 full container trains are transported on the 1520 mm gauge in UTLC ERA services.
On February 21, 2018 in Vienna UTLC ERA and Kaliningrad Railway signed a Memorandum of Cooperation referring the multimodal container transportation in China – Europe communication using the 1520 mm gauge railway services from Dostyk/Altynkol stations through the port of Kaliningrad or Baltiysk for the further transmission to the sea transport and delivery to the ports of Northern Europe.
After the UTLC ERA President Alexey Grom, the Governor of the Kaliningrad Region Anton Alikhanov and the Head of the Kaliningrad Railway Viktor Golomolsin meeting at the XXII St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in May 2018, the idea of organizing the Eurasian Transit Forum in Kaliningrad arose, which brought the shippers and transport companies together to discuss further joint projects. Multimodal projects have become one of the forum results.
