First Agroexpress train carrying oat flakes and cereals sent from Urals to India via North-South ITC

CHELYABINSK. May 2 (Interfax) - The first full-fledged Agroexpress train with oat flakes and cereals was sent from the Yuzhnouralsky Transport and Logistics Center in Chelyabinsk region (Dry Port Yuzhnouralsky management company LLC, a subsidiary of the State Transport Leasing Company) to India via the eastern route of the North-South international transport corridor (ITC), the press service of the State Transport Leasing Company said.

"The station of Sarahs (Turkmenistan) will receive 31 twenty-foot containers from the territory of the Republic of Kazakhstan, then the containers will be reloaded onto track 1435 and will proceed through the territory of Iran to the port of Bandar Abbas and then by sea to the port of Mundra (India)," the press release says.

The planned travel time to the destination port is 35 days. The train was sent by Russian Railways Logistics JSC.

According to expert estimates, in the coming years the volume of agricultural goods transported along this transport corridor may reach 100,000 tonnes per year, the press release said.

"Continuous rail connections with countries such as Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Iran through Kazakhstan, as well as additional prospects for organizing cargo transportation to the countries of the Persian Gulf and Africa, open up new opportunities for Russian exporters to sell their products in alternative markets," the statement says.

The Yuzhnouralsky TLC is part of the Russian Transport Ministry's "Formation of a Network of Transport and Logistics Centers" project. Currently, the TLC includes a class A warehouse complex with an area of over 60,000 sq. m., a container terminal with a capacity of about 10,000 TEU, as well as railway and utility infrastructure facilities.

As reported, since the spring of last year, Russian Railways began sending container trains along the North-South ITC from the Chelyabinsk-Gruzovaya station of the South Ural Railway (a branch of JSC Russian Railways), and since the summer of last year, from the Formachevo station, located near the Yuzhnouralsky TLC, whose infrastructure is used for the transshipment of containers from vehicles to rail.

It was also reported that the FESCO transport group launched a railway container service on the Vladivostok-Chelyabinsk (Formachevo) route in 2022, also using the Yuzhnouralsky TLC.

The North-South International Transport Corridor (ITC) is a multimodal route for transporting passengers and cargo, with a total length from St. Petersburg to the port of Mumbai of 7,200 km. A significant part of it passes through Russian railways infrastructure, which, depending on the route, accounts for 33-53% of the total length of the land part of the corridor. The main goal of the development of the North-South ITC is to serve Russian foreign trade with the countries of the Transcaucasus, the Caspian region, the states of South Asia and the Persian Gulf.