INTERNATIONAL: DHL Global Forwarding has launched a scheduled weekly intermodal service from Suzhou in China to Warszawa in Poland, with a journey time of around 14 days. The company says the block train running via the Trans-Siberian route ‘takes half the time of ocean freight and is a sixth of the cost of air freight’.
The new service is in addition to DHL’s daily single-wagon service from Shanghai to Europe via the Trans-Siberian route, and its weekly block train from Chengdu to Europe via the western corridor through Kazakhstan. To complement the full–container services branded DHL Railline, DHL has also introduced a less-than-container-load option branded DHL Railconnect.
‘Suzhou is a strategic departure point for Jiangsu province and it is a huge benefit for our customers to have direct access to inter-continental rail links rather than having to go via Chengdu’, according to Roger Crook, CEO, DHL Global Forwarding, Freight. ‘Being able to offer multiple loading points across China creates many opportunities for our customers which is why we are seeing so much interest in multimodal services.’
DHL is also exploring the use of ferries to expand the network of rail services to include Japan and Korea.
