Freight keeps on rolling during Spring Festival
The Yiwu-Xinjiang-Europe freight train service ran continuously during the weeklong Spring Festival holiday, boosting international trade.
Statistics from Zhejiang province’s Department of Commerce show that within nine days starting from Lunar New Year’s Eve, 46 trains departed Yiwu carrying a total of 3,782 twenty-foot equivalent units of cargo. The trains carried anti-pandemic supplies, daily necessities, small household appliances, textiles, toys and auto parts.
Among them, a record 10 trains departed on Feb 17.
Lin Huihuan, general manager of Yitong Europe Logistics, said during previous Spring Festival holidays only one or two trains would depart Yiwu for Europe, but this year trains departed every single day of the holiday.
“It is expected that the demand for freight service will increase greatly after the holiday, so we have increased capacity by launching more trains in advance. This will help stabilize market prices and maintain stable freight transportation,” Lin said.
In order to ensure the normal and efficient departure of the trains, local customs officials and station employees worked overtime during the holiday.
“The original halfday it took to process goods was completed in less than half an hour,” said Zhao Yuanchao, an official with Yiwu Customs. The customs team used a large-scale container inspection system.
Gong Zigang, a dispatcher, said on the busiest day during the Spring Festival holiday, there were 2,600 containers processed at the station where he works.
To improve the operational efficiency, Luo Huayi, deputy manager of Yiwu Land Port Railway Port Development, said his company classifies containers according to their destination.
The Yiwu-Xinjiang-Europe freight service has played an important role in boosting international trade even as the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the world in 2020, local officials said. Thirteen cargo routes linking Yiwu and cities in Spain, the Czech Republic and Russia opened last year.
In 2020, a total of 974 trains departed carrying 80,000 TEUs of import and export goods with a total value of 20.6 billion yuan ($3.2 billion).