China sends containers south, to Korea via Russian port
KHABAROVSK. Dec 18 (Interfax) - OJSC Russian Railways (RZD) and OJSC Transcontainer on Wednesday organized a pilot trip for a container train from Suifenhe in the Northeast of China to Russia's Nakhodka Port, Far Eastern Railway, a branch of RZD, said in a press release.
"A container train with 40 cars with transit cargo is travelling from China via Vladivostok region for the further transport of containers by sea to ports in southern China and the Republic of Korea," the release says.
The train left the border station Grodekovo at 7:20 a.m., Moscow time and arrived at Nakhodka-Vostochnaya 6:00 p.m.
Both Russia and China are interested in the rail link between Suifenhe and Nakhodka. In China the line will be used by companies such as HuaShen, which sends from 300 to 600 containers of paper, chemicals and agriculture products to China's southern ports monthly.
This transport corridor is an alternative to the traditional link via the Port of Dalian, which is strongly overloaded, the release said.
The project is being implemented in accordance with a decision of the Greater Tumen Initiative in October 2013. One of the key areas of cooperation for the initiative is the organization of transit for Chinese exports via Russian sea ports in Primorye.
GTI is a mechanism for intergovernmental cooperation in Northeast Asia, which is supported by the UN Development Programme. The participating countries are China, Mongolia, the Republic of Korea and Russia.