Wiener Zeitung: Revolution in transport Asia to European Union

Wiener Zeitung

Revolution in transport Asia to European Union

The idea of replacing ships with rail has won high-level political support. Russia, China, and other countries along the route to Europe say they want to boost rail shipments, and EU countries with Russian-gauge spur lines, including Finland and Hungary, could also get involved.Somewhere in Asia, a train carrying Chinese tomato paste is making its way toward Poland, and Marian Bak can’t wait for it to get here – it’s part of the plan for a revolution in transport from Asia to Europe. Bak runs CZH, a Polish company that says Asian manufacturers could cut their month-long transit time to Europe in half by shipping goods to its rail yard, where a Russian-gauge line extends some 645 km (400 miles) into the European Union’s largest new member. CZH is building a container terminal at the yard in Slawkow, originally laid out during communism to bring Soviet raw materials like iron ore to Poland’s southern industrial heartland, and send back steel. The tomato paste train is a trial run. The terminal is the westernmost point of the wider Russian broad gauge railway system that runs from the Pacific coast city of Vladivostok, some 8,000 km (5,000 miles) away. In Slawkow, cargo is shifted onto trucks, or onto trains built to run on Europe’s standard gauge rails for their onward journey in the EU. "About nine million containers come from Asia to Europe each year. This takes about 30 days by ship, and our project cuts this to 15 days,” Bak says. "Time is money, and there are big savings to be had here.” The Polish government, which owns CZH, will put 50 million zlotys ($15 million) into road and water infrastructure around the site this year, and CZH hopes to invest 40 million euros ($49 million) to raise the terminal’s capacity. With the help of EU funds, capacity would rise from 35,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) a year to 120,000. That would give Slawkow about one percent of the total Asia-to-Europe market – a drop in the ocean, perhaps, but CZH says it has room to expand.