FESCO Transportation Group is launching Silkway Amber – a regular container train going from Zhengzhou (China, Henan province) to Hamburg (Germany) through Kaliningrad (Russia) and back, Port of Hamburg said in its release.
The route goes through the border crossings of Erlian/Zamyn-Uud/Naushki (China/Mongolia/Russia), Mamonovo/Braniewo (Russia/Poland). Transfer to the rolling stock track 1435 is performed in the Kaliningrad region at Dzerzhynskaya-Novaya station, total transit time is 14 days. The service will mainly be used for transportation of consumer goods and equipment.
The first train, consisting of 43 containers, departed from Zhengzhou on 24 October. From the beginning of 2020, the trains will be departing from Zhengzhou and Hamburg one time in a week. The service was launched by FESCO to increase transportation volumes of transit containerized goods over Russian territory and to expand the geography of the company’s services. Creating new routes using facilities of the Kaliningrad region enables FESCO to offer not only overland container transport services, but also multimodal services through ports of Baltiysk and Kaliningrad, which will be opened under a joint project of FESCO and DB Cargo.
There are already two FESCO overland services for arranging transportation between Zhengzhou and Hamburg – through the Russian Far East and Mongolia. Transit time on the route through Grodekovo (the Primorye Territory)/Suifenhe (China) border crossing is 18 days; transit through Erlian/Zamyn-Uud/Naushki takes 14 days. Usually transportation between China and Europe is arranged with intermodal services through the port of Vladivostok.