InterRail Newsflash

InterRail Newsflash
NO. 05-06 / 2015
NEWS FROM THE INTERRAIL GROUP
InterRail emphasizes GETO’s important role in Europe-Asia rail traffic
Rail traffic across the land bridge between Europe and the Far East has developed well in recent years. This
was the conclusion of the Group of European Transsiberian Operators and Forwarders (GETO) at its general
assembly on June 12, 2015, in Frankfurt/Main. InterRail Newsflash asked Hans Reinhard, Chairman of InterRail
Holding AG as well as President of GETO, about the progress and prospects for such traffic and the activities
of GETO.
What are important advances that
have taken place in the past year
regarding the development of rail
traffic between Europe and the Far
East, especially with China?
We have made significant progress
in the European-Asian routes with
regard to transport times, reliability,
number and variety of product offerings, and cooperation between the
parties involved. InterRail and the
other member companies of GETO
have successfully contributed to this
progress. They were or are involved
in, for example, container rail traffic
between Chengdu and Lodz, Suzhou
and Warsaw, Zhengzhou and Hamburg, Wuhan and Pardubice, Wuhan
and Gorzow, and Yiwu and Madrid.
The latter was actually a world record, using the longest continuous
rail line of around 13,000 km over a
period of only 20 days, and received
a lot of attention in both Asia and Europe.
What benefits of traffic across the
land bridge are most appreciated
by clients?
In preparation for the GETO annual meeting, we asked members
what benefits of Transsiberian traffic their clients are most interested
in. Among the responses, the short
transit time came out on top as the
main argument. This also resulted
in the need to search for additional
ways to reduce delivery times. For
many clients, the standard in terms
of competition is not primarily marine
transport, which is much slower but
has an unbeatable price, but rather
air transport, which is more expensive than rail transport. Rail transport
is not only much less expensive but is
now getting ever closer to airfreight in
terms of transit time when intermediate transshipment via the major hubs
and the transport to and from these
hubs are taken into account.
With respect to shorter transport
times, there are a range of current
initiatives concerning the land bridge.
For example, a general program
to shorten transit times has been
agreed upon between CIS railroads.
The results speak for themselves.
According to information from the
OSShD, container block trains need
only about five and a half days from
Dostyk on the Kazakh-Chinese border to Brest on the border between
Belarus and Poland. After the successful implementation of the “Transsib in 7 days” program, the RZD is
now working on the “Transsib in 6
days” program. This affects the route
from Vladivostok to Moscow, St. Petersburg or Brest. Chinese railroads
also want to set entirely new standards for rapid rail transport, including freight transport, to Russia and
Kazakhstan using various projects.
Shorter transit times and more flexibility are also desired by GETO companies, especially the European railroads.
What is important for clients in addition to the time factor?
In the responses to our survey, the
argument of short transit times is
generally closely linked with such
factors as scheduling and timeliness as additional key advantages of
Transsiberian rail traffic. With regard
to environmental factors, only a few
GETO members also took this factor
into account from a client perspective
in our survey. For the majority of their
clients, advantages such as reducing
CO2 consumption do not play a predominant role.
...continued next page
IMPRINT Public Relations - InterRail Holding AG, St. Gallen / Switzerland
Phone: +41 71 227 15 15, Fax: +41 71 227 15 30, info@interrail.ag, www.interrail.ag
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InterRail Newsflash
NO. 05-06 / 2015
What new initiatives from GETO
member companies are there for
2015/16?
For example, additional block train
traffic from GETO members from China to Western Europe is in the pipeline. In the reverse direction, a regular rapid train service from Brest to
Suzhou, a transport hub near Shanghai, via the Trans-Siberian Railroad
line was put into operation in spring
of this year by a GETO member company. Other operators also want to
develop block train services from Europe to China in 2015.
A new approach is the idea of various companies to establish regular
block train traffic between hubs at
the limits of the broad gauge system,
i.e. eastern border of the EU and the
western and northern borders of
China. One such concept is to develop Alashankou and Malaszewicze
as incoming or outgoing hubs for all
traffic between China and the EU. Interesting new offerings can certainly
be expected in this area. Given the
increasing interest of many smaller
clients who do not have the numbers
for a company train in also being able
to participate in railroad traffic across
the land bridge, the search for economically interesting offers for these
should be stepped up.
What role does GETO play for InterRail in developing this traffic?
It has always been our opinion that
a degree of cooperation between all
operators and forwarders involved
in the routes between Europe and
Asia will enable us to present our demands and wishes to the railroads,
for example, but also to the customs
and border authorities and other
structures influencing this traffic, in a
more sustainable manner. Therefore,
we – or more specifically our predecessor companies – were among the
initiators and founders of GETO in
1978. Since then, there have been
a lot of ups and downs in the international traffic on the Trans-Siberian
Railroad line – the most important
Europe-Asia land bridge – which ultimately reflect the course of history.
It is therefore particularly pleasing,
for us at InterRail and for GETO as
a whole, that we have been able to
achieve an upswing in recent years.
Unlike the bilateral rail traffic between
Western Europe and Russia – which
has been affected very negatively by
the political tension and its impact
on foreign trade relations – the land
bridge has continued to develop successfully.
same time, we want to exploit opportunities for cooperation better within
the framework of our group and to intensify the exchange of information. I
am convinced that this will contribute
to new impetus for rail traffic across
the land bridge.
You are not only the GETO President but also the Deputy Secretary
General of the International Coordinating Council on Transsiberian
Transportation (CCTT) for Europe.
What is the cooperation like between GETO and the CCTT?
GETO represents the interests of its
members in the CCTT and has an
impact on its activities, both directly
and through the working groups. Of
course, we in turn benefit from the
fact that a growing number of Asian
partners, including from China, are
members of the CCTT today. This results in beneficial contact opportunities for the development of rail traffic.
GETO currently has 15 member companies. We want to expand this number further because we expect that
this will result in even more emphasis
with respect to safeguarding European interests with regard to railroads as well as in the CCTT. At the
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IMPRINT Public Relations - InterRail Holding AG, St. Gallen / Switzerland
Phone: +41 71 227 15 15, Fax: +41 71 227 15 30, info@interrail.ag, www.interrail.ag
InterRail Newsflash
NO. 05-06 / 2015
NEWS FROM THE INTERRAIL GROUP
InterRail strengthens market position in Russia
The two Russian InterRail companies RailService Ltd. and InterRail
Trans Siberian Express Service
Ltd., both registered in Moscow, are
merging. The new company will operate under the name of InterRail
Service LLC; it will be headed Yuri
Kulakin, the current General Director
of RailService Ltd.The official start of
the new company is scheduled for
September.
With the merger of both Russian InterRail companies, customers can be
offered even better complex services
for the Russian market and for transit shipments via Russia. Moreover,
the merger will further strengthen the
market position of InterRail in Russia. The optimized internal structure
and the pooling of logistics services
in one hand will provide additional
benefits to the customers.
„Merging both companies is part of
our business strategy to join forces
to make it easier for our customers
and partners. Both companies are
long-standing service providers with
years of excellent experience on the
market, and have cooperated intensively already before. Now, they
work together on the development
of the product portfolio and on cultivating new freight corridors”, says
Hans Reinhard, Chairman of InterRail Holding AG.
LLC will operate branch offices in St.
Petersburg, Chelyabinsk, Orenburg,
Ekaterinburg, and Vostochny. In cooperation with the highly developed
network of the entire InterRail Group
in Eurasia, competitive and reliable
logistics services will be offered at
all the major traffic hubs and border
crossings of the region.
Apart from the head office in Moscow, the merged InterRail Service
NEWS FROM THE RAILWAY MARKET
Uzbekistan develops international railway corridors
Uzbekistan, too, wants to make a
name for itself as a transit country. At
the international “Transport corridor
Uzbekistan-Latvia-EU“ conference
in Tashkent in early June, the representative of the Uzbek Ministry for
Foreign Economic Relations, Investments and Trade, Davron Khodjaev,
explained his government’s plans
to advance the country’s transport
routes.
As a result of diversification, the
transport routes from Uzbekistan are
being developed - in nine directions.
At this time, three new transport corridors are being tested for use, he
said. “The first corridor, towards the
European countries, uses the BakuAlkhakalaki-Kars railway connection.
The other, currently very important
connection towards China and South
East Asia goes via Khorgos, the new
logistics hub at the Kazakh-Chinese
border. And the third corridor leads
to Europe via the Turkish port of Mersin with transit through Turkmenistan,
Iran, and Turkey”, he said.
16 projects to develop rail connections are scheduled in Uzbekistan
between 2015 and 2019. All in all,
20 railway and road transport connections cross the country. With its
intensified orientation on transit traffic, the Silk Road is gaining additional
importance.
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IMPRINT Public Relations - InterRail Holding AG, St. Gallen / Switzerland
Phone: +41 71 227 15 15, Fax: +41 71 227 15 30, info@interrail.ag, www.interrail.ag
InterRail Newsflash
NO. 05-06 / 2015
NEWS FROM THE RAILWAY MARKET
Logistics towards India taking form
At a meeting in mid-June between
the President of the Kazakh Railways
KTZ, Askar Mamin, and the Indian
Minister of Shipping and Highways
Nitin Gadkari and Railway Minister
Suresh Prabhu, the development of
efficient logistics chains to guarantee the goods flows between India
and the major markets of the Eur-
asian continent was the main topic.
Special importance is attributed to
the new north-south railway corridor
Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran with
subsequent sea transport to India.
According to Mamin, a logistics route
is being set up at this time for the
transport of goods from and to India
via the ports of Mundra, Bandar Ab-
bas through Iran, Turkmenistan and
Kazakhstan.
In order to finance transport logistics
projects directly on Indian territory as
part of the regional expansion of its
activities, KTZ signed a contract with
the Russian Sberbank in June.
KTZ strengthens transit potential
With numerous initiatives, the direction of KTZ is trying to enforce the
development of goods flows via its
national railway corridors. With partners in Turkmenistan, joint consortiums are to be established to create
regional transport logistics hubs. The
cooperation with the Lithuanian port
of Klaipeda is to be intensified. The
volume of goods transported via the
container block train “Saule” is to be
increased. This train runs between
Lithuania and Kazakhstan, with a
connection, westwards, to EU and
eastwards to China and other Central Asian countries. Plans foresee
the integration of the KTZ’ reefer park
and the terminal capacities of partner
company VPA Logistics at the port
of Klaipeda as well as the formation
of a joint company “Saule Logistics
Solution”.
In the near future, logistics solutions
à la ‘rail-air’ are to be developed, too
– solutions that connect rail freight
traffic between China and Kazakhstan with air freight from Europe and
Kazakhstan, and vice versa.
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IMPRINT Public Relations - InterRail Holding AG, St. Gallen / Switzerland
Phone: +41 71 227 15 15, Fax: +41 71 227 15 30, info@interrail.ag, www.interrail.ag