Containers for sawn timber: Russian Railways transforms export delivery to China
Russian Railways is moving further towards containerisation of export goods to China. Among the latest developments is the rail shipment of saw timber loaded in the 40-foot boxes from Western Siberia. This transformation will allow Russia to intensify its export trade and remove more trucks from the country’s roads.
RZD Logistics organised the first shipment of a container train with sawn timber from the container yard of the Asino station in the Tomsk region to China. 48 40-foot containers were loaded with saw timber to deliver to the Jinannan freight station, which is located within the city of Jinan. The train’s route runs via the Zabaikalsk/Manchuria railway border crossing.
The new solution for the export delivery has significantly simplified the transportation process due to the proximity of the Asino station to the place of production. Earlier, the sawn timber from the Tomsk region transported abroad only via the Tomsk-1 and Tomsk-gruzovoy stations. Such scheme required the truck delivery for a distance of 120 kilometres from the manufacturing enterprise to the mentioned stations.
Benefits
Such optimisation of delivery will allow attracting additional freight volumes for Russian Railways and the container yard of the Asino station particularly. It is worth noting that the latter was constructed within the investment programme and requires a return on investment through the organisation of commercial work. Moreover, the new transport scheme will result in reducing the truck traffic on the congested federal motorways in the Tomsk region.
RZD Logistics intends to ship the container trains with sawn timber from Western Siberia twice a month. “Since this method of shipment has great prospects for all participants in the transportation process, the plans of the Novosibirsk branch of RZD Logistics is in the organisation of regular monthly shipments of two container trains on this route,” noted Alexei Maltsev, the acting director of the Novosibirsk branch of RZD Logistics.