RZD Logistics, the freight arm of Russian Railways, and the region’s the largest multimodal operator, says it doubled its year-on-year volume of transit traffic along the Europe-China corridor in the first quarter of 2017.

The company accounts for almost half – 47 per cent – of container transit on the China-Europe route, and it transported 22,500 TEUs, an extra 11,900 (+112 per cent) on the 2016 figure of 10,600. But it was down slightly, by just over three per cent, on the previous quarter’s 23,200 TEUs.

Growing demand

This steady rise over the past year reflects the growing demand for rail freight between Europe and the Far East. RZD Logistics’ most popular routes were Chungking-Duisburg, Chengdu-Lodz, Suzhou-Warsaw, Duisburg-Chungking and Changsha-Warsaw. RZD also manages container transit at the three principal border crossings, at Dostyk (Kazakhstan), Zabaikalsk (Russia) and Naushki (Mongolia).

Vyacheslav Valentik, CEO of JSC RZD Logistics, said: “Transit grows very actively nowadays. We see serious interest from all parties – China, Europe and Russia – in the further increase of transit volume. The impressive results of the first quarter vividly demonstrate this tendency, and I am sure that we will manage to keep the high pace of growth in the course of the whole year 2017.”