Shanxi opens sea-rail combined freight train service to Turkey

A new direct China-Europe freight train service was launched on Thursday, linking North China's inland province of Shanxi with Turkey.

A train loaded with goods, including daily necessities, machinery and equipment, left a logistics park in Taiyuan, the provincial capital, on Thursday morning for Mersin in southern Turkey.

The train passed through the Khorgos land port in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region via the Aktau sea port in Kazakhstan and will stop at Baku port in Azerbaijan before arriving at its destination in Turkey.

This is the first time that Shanxi Jinou Logistics Co has applied international sea-rail combined transportation to the China-Europe freight train service.

Compared with traditional China-Europe freight train services running on land, the rail-sea combined transportation cycle is 80 percent shorter than that of sea transportation, and its logistics price is 20 percent lower than air transportation, providing a high-efficiency and low-cost logistics channel.

Currently, the freight train routes via Taiyuan connect 27 cities in 11 countries in Central Asia and Europe, bringing business opportunities to thousands of companies involved in the Belt and Road Initiative and satisfying various production and consumption needs.

According to Shi Yixiao, an official of Wusu customs in Taiyuan, in the first half of this year, Wusu customs has supervised 87 China-Europe freight trains, an increase of 42.6 percent over the same period last year; 4,297 customs clearance declarations have been reviewed, and imported and exported goods totaled 96,100 metric tons in weight and 1.36 billion yuan ($211.02 million) in value.