Paving the Silk Road
Ten years ago, Bulgaria joined China’s ’One Belt, One Road’ initiative. This hasn’t been manifested, however, in concrete transport infrastructure projects in the Balkan country – unlike in Serbia and Montenegro. ITJ correspondent Frank Stier asked around a little in Sofia, seeking to find out why this is, and how resourceful hauliers are going their own way.
It wasn’t for a lack of ambitious plans in Bulgaria. In 2016 China’s HNA Group was ready to take on a 35-year concession to operate the airport in Bulgaria’s second-largest city, Plovdiv. HNA had plans to turn Plovdiv into a transport and logistics hub dedicated to cargo transport between Europe and the Far East. This didn’t come to fruition, however, as HNA ran into financial difficulties.
Nevertheless, the Sino-Bulgarian economic relationship has developed dynamically since then, with bilateral trade almost doubling to USD 4.2 billion between 2015 and 2023. Bulgarian exports account for just under a quarter of this.
On this positive economic basis, Bulgaria and China now want to strengthen their transport links. Chinese financial institutions are ready to contribute to developing the Bulgarian maritime shipping industry under the New Silk Road initiative, as China’s ambassador to Bulgaria, Dai Qingli, promised at a Sino-Bulgarian business forum in September.
A new push for airfreight
Following the conclusion of a bilateral air cargo agreement ambassador Qingli now believes that “the preconditions for a direct airfreight services between the two countries are now in place.”
Bulgaria’s transport ministry has already completed a tender procedure and selected the Bulgarian carrier Compass Cargo Airlines to operate up to seven flights a week to the Chinese metropolises of Shanghai, Zhengzhou and Shenzhen.
One transport company that has benefited particularly strongly from the positive development of Sino-Bulgarian foreign trade is World Transport Overseas (WTO), a freight forwarder based at Sofia airport that specialises in transport to the Middle and Far East.
According to the Bulgarian business magazine “Kapital” it more than quadrupled its turnover to around EUR 105 million in the years of the pandemic, from 2020 to 2022, and established itself in eighth place amongst the top ten Bulgarian transport and logistics companies.
Old sea and new land routes
As part of its business growth development plan WTO has now expanded its network to 26 branches in 12 countries. In the Balkans, WTO has offices in Belgrade, Zagreb and Koper, and in China in Shanghai and Shenzhen.
Most recently, the freight forwarder launched three new transport links to the Far East which will, according to the company, “yield considerable benefits in terms of speed, safety and cost-effective operations for import and export consignments.” To date WTO has operated FCL services to Dubai in the Middle East and Hong Kong in the Far East, operating via the domestic Black Sea ports of Varna and Burgas, the Romanian Black Sea port of Constantza and Thessaloniki (Greece).
Since July it has offered weekly express consolidation services from the Slovenian Adriatic port of Koper through the Suez Canal to Hong Kong. It is also convenient for countries in Central and Eastern Europe. With a port-to-port transit time of 31 days, WTO considers it “the fastest sea freight option from Europe to the Far East, compared to all other seaports, including Rotterdam and Hamburg.”
Balancing speed and costs
Since June WTO has operated LTL express services with its own vehicles between its Sofia warehouse and its logistics terminal in Shanghai, with an overall journey time of a mere 19 days.
According to WTO the cost of the service is about one third that of airfreight, so it is of some interest to companies “seeking a balance between speed and costs, and aiming to avoid delays traditionally associated with sea freight.”
Since May WTO has offered an LCL service from Xi’an to Belgrade by rail – “another alternative to sea transport.” To this end WTO is joining in a railway link launched by Hamburg-based Metrans in March, which runs between Hebei province and Serbia, via the northern route through Russia and Central Europe. WTO’s lorries trucks take over there.
The central corridor, which could link China directly to Sofia via Central Asia, doesn’t seem ready for the market. This may be partly due to the fact that Bulgaria has still not completed the modernisation of its railway lines from the Black Sea and the Turkish border to Sofia.