Southern Transport Corridor rail-sea intermodal transport trains
By Keqiao Cheng, EDITOR
Chongqing, China’s southwestern inland city, has never been a place of production of coffee beans. However, more and more trains, trucks, and even ships full of Southeast Asian coffee beans are gathering in this city. From here, the product will be transferred either to Europe by China-Europe Freight Trains or to the vast coastal markets of eastern China by ships.
On February 27, 2017, the notion of the Southern Transport Corridor (hereinafter referred to as STC) was officially proposed in Beijing. Fortunately, Chongqing has been planned as the starting point of the STC.
By the end of last September, it has been one year since the launch of the first train of STC rail-sea intermodal transport. One year is not much time, but within these days Chongqing is gradually changing the global supply chains of certain products like the mentioned coffee beans.
Huge changes in the eyes of a truck driver
Tuanjiecun Train Station, located in the west of Chongqing city, is the starting point for both China-Europe (Chongqing) Freight Trains and STC rail-sea intermodal transport.
When our reporter arrived here, there was a busy scene at the station.
A large number of containers were piled up at the yard, and the forklifts shuttled back and forth. Outside the station, many container trucks were waiting to enter for cargo.
The middle-aged truck driver Li Shijun was sitting in the cab of one of the trucks, waiting to drive into the station to ship containers. He has worked here for three years, and to ship the containers from here to Chongqing Railway Port Logistic Center for security check is his routine work.
However, with the launch of the STC trains, Li has witnessed tremendous changes in the past year.
“At the beginning, there was only one STC train per month, and for me, I only need to ship a couple of containers per week.” Li was very glad to share the story with us. “But it’s changing. Now the number of containers I ship a day is more than what I did in a week!”
Corresponding to the augment of the business, there are more job offers for the locals now.
Intelligent security check in 5 minutes
About ten minutes later, Li successfully drove the truck to the Logistic Center.
Unexpectedly, he didn’t unload the container. Instead, he stopped the truck at the checkpoint and went away to take a short rest.
It turned out to be that the security check has become “smart” now.
The traditional way was to unload the container and to check the goods manually. It took at least a couple of hours to check only one container.
But now it only takes 5 minutes because of the new intelligent scanning equipment.
“Through the machine inspection, the weight of the goods can be checked. Whether the goods in the container are consistent with the customs declaration, or whether any other goods are hidden in the container can be detected. We can even calculate the quantity of the goods.” explained the staff of the checkpoint.
An expanding networking of Southern Transport Corridor
What Li Shijun has witnessed is just the tip of the iceberg. With the rapid development, the STC is becoming more and more influential.
In the past two months, the STC opened its distribution centers in Singapore, Vietnam and Hong Kong, respectively.
By the end of last September, the STC rail-sea intermodal trains have been issued 373 times, whose destination covers 123 ports of 62 countries and regions. The foreign trade value has reached USD 0.24 billion, and the domestic trade value, RMB 0.99 billion.
Source: Chongqing Economic Times
For more news about the Southern Transport Corridor, you may refer to the article.
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