Traditionally if you were sourcing stock in China you’d either pay to fly small lightweight items to the UK, or you would be waiting a couple of months for them to be loaded onto a ship and make their way across the high seas. Now there’s a new alternative, the train.
In an unlikely move, there’s a new China Railway Corporation service direct from Zhengzhou passing from China through Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, Belguim and France before crossing under the English Channel on the Eurostar route to arrive in Barking, Essex.
The first 200 container train left last Sunday but the mammoth 12,000 mile journey takes 18 days to complete and is part of a wider Chinese strategy to forge new trade links with the UK. Due to different railway gauges along what’s been dubbed “the New Silk Route”, containers will be offloaded onto new rolling stock in the course of it’s trip.
Cheaper than air freight, quicker that sea, there are some obvious advantages to shipping goods via train. If you’re importing from China ask your import agent if shipping by train would make commercial sense for your business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRVnrQHJ3Ps
4 Responses
I suppose if I were 25 years old again, I’d be filled with joy and wonder at this great business opportunity, but I cannot help wondering how many items within the 200 containers would have been made in Britain (Or even the Commonwealth) at some time in the past ?
Obviously smartphones and so on didn’t exist in the 1960’s, but most of the stuff in pound shops would have been made here, giving employment to our workers (In between strikes and other industrial action !), so is it time to follow the lead of The Donald, and think about the futures of our own people ?
At the very least we could require some sort of level playing field before allowing Chinese goods to enter the country, for example environmental concerns about poisonous waste from Chinese factories, and the lack of health and safety laws/enforcement.
I wonder who the first few replies will be from….. Happy New Year to you all, whatever the case.
I am curious to know what goes on the train on the back journey; Can’t believe it will travel back empty, so lets hope its full of high end luxury goods that we can make and sell to the Chinese