A train carrying 24 tons of frozen cooked shrimp from Songkhla Province of Thailand arrived in southwest China's Kunming City on Friday, marking the beginning of frozen aquatic product transportation via the Lancang-Mekong Express service of the China-Laos Railway.
The pilot project represents another important expansion of the categories of cross-border goods transported via the China-Laos Railway.
The shrimp will undergo strict quality and safety inspections at a local cold-chain logistics center before being sold as Spring Festival offerings to consumers nationwide.
According to Liu Qiang, general manager of the international freight train subsidiary of the Yunnan Energy Investment Company, the shipment of shrimp also utilized road freight as part of its transportation journey.
"Compared with traditional sea and road transport, this innovative road-rail intermodal transport can save about 14 days, effectively reducing transportation costs and improving logistics efficiency," Liu said.
Since the full operation of the China-Laos Railway on Dec 3, 2021, the total cargo throughput of the railway has exceeded 50 million tons, including 11.58 million tons of cross-border goods.
The Spring Festival, the most important traditional festival in China, will fall on Jan 29 in 2025.
Thai seafood enters Chinese market via China-Laos Railway
Three freight trains with a speed of 120 kilometers per hour respectively departed from three Chinese cities on Monday, marking the country's official launch of cargo express trains.
One of the expresses departed from Langfang City in north China's Hebei Province with 43 containers, and is going to arrive in Changping Station in south China's Guangdong Province in over 30 hours.
"The route between (Hebei Province's) Guangyang District to (Guangdong Province's) Changping Town stretches 1,750 kilometers. The maximum speed of the train can reach 120 kilometers per hour. We set the price close to that of the road transportation, which is roughly the same," said Zhang Wansheng, deputy director of China Railway Beijing Group's freight transport department.
The cargo express trains mainly travel between economically developed areas, such as the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region, the Yangtze River Delta and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.
There will be six lines, with all of them using container marshaling.
Clients are able to check the price and available spots of the containers online, and make bookings based on their needs.
"After we book the spot for containers, a fleet of trucks is dispatched to load goods directly at our location. Let's calculate the costs, it saves us about 15 percent in transportation cost," said Hou Bin, a person in charge of a logistics enterprise in Shanghai.
China launches cost-effective cargo express trains
