In the first quarter of 2024, the volume of container transit from China to Europe by rail through Russia increased by 44% to 90 thousand TEU. Such data was announced to journalists during a briefing by Alexey Shilo, Deputy General Director of Russian Railways, head of the Center for Branded Transport Services (CFTO). According to the results of the second quarter of 2024, Russian Railways expects the growth rate of transit traffic to remain at the level of 30-40% compared to last year, he added.
The China-Europe rail transit through Russia, primarily via the shortest route through Kazakhstan and Belarus, has recently become actively used by international freight forwarders again due to military tensions in the Red Sea. Fearing attacks by Yemeni Houthis in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden, a number of shipping companies redirected their ships to Europe, bypassing Africa, which increased the length of the route by almost 3,600 nautical miles or about 20 days en route. Under these conditions, a shorter and faster overland route through Russia from China to Europe has become attractive to shippers again.
Despite this "opportunistic history," Alexey Shilo stressed, "the corridor has been formed for a long time." "It is technologically the most advanced: The delivery speed from the Chinese border to the EU border is still between 5 and 7 days. On average, this is 3-5 times faster than colleagues previously transported by sea," he noted. The Deputy Head of Russian Railways noted that after the start of its operation, despite the reduction in transit traffic between Europe and China, the actual volume of traffic along this corridor has not significantly decreased. According to him, the changes mainly affected the structure of cargo traffic: "the dropped volume of transit traffic was replaced by goods from Belarus and Russia to China." In particular, transit between Belarus and China increased by 68% in the first quarter compared to the same level last year to 135 thousand TEU, he said.
