A multimodal route has been set up for the transportation of Chinese mushrooms to Russia during winter. While the first and last leg is carried out by train, the cargo is loaded onto ships to avoid transit through a large part of Russia, where temperatures dip to minus forty degrees.

The service that runs between Nanyang and Moscow is a tailor-made transportation scheme rolled out by the local comprehensive bonded zone and Xixia County, a major mushroom producing area of China, Xinhua news reported. The Chinese news agency cites Sun Duo, who is responsible for the freight service, explaining that the land route in winter is just too cold. “From March onwards, the cargo can be shipped entirely by train again, which takes fifteen days only.”

Multimodal route

A freight train loaded with 35 containers of mushroom products left the city of Nanyang, central China’s Henan Province on 1 January, 2020. The train carrying a total of 910 tonnes of mushrooms arrived at the port city of Qingdao, east China’s Shandong Province, 48 hours later.

From Qingdao, the cargo will be loaded onto a ship on 9 January. The shipment worth 30 million yuan (around 3.86 million euros) will arrive in the Russian port of St. Petersburg by the end of the month. Here, they are reloaded onto a train again to reach their final destination of Moscow.