An important step
The Atlantic Forwarding Group has managed the first transported by rail directly to Switzerland from Asia. It celebrated it with a reception that allowed representatives to not only discuss the advance digitally, but also with business partners on site.
The Atlantic Forwarding Group, founded in Switzerland in 1979, recently transported its first-ever groupage container by rail from China directly to Switzerland. Ever since it was established the company has worked intensely in the groupage container field, for example through its branch offices in Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea, already opened in the year it was established. Now Atlantic’s business friends and employees met up in the compound of the forwarder Felix Transport in Arlesheim, near Basel (Switzerland), to talk to each other directly in these times of Covid-19.
Atlantic Forwarding’s Philipp Baur and Keven Trefzer took time out to talk to ITJ reporter Jutta Iten about how these new rail transport options were very welcome in Switzerland. Baur underlined the fact that the connection was set up in the face of bureaucratic, administrative and insurance stipulations arising from multifaceted government lockdown measures in transit countries, including provisions on transporting medical equipment, such as masks.
“These rail options, linked to sea freight transport, can be considered competitors to airfreight,” Baur said. Shippers benefit less from fast air cargo transport if they have to add long pre-feedering legs to and from airports to solutions. “We have great experience in China and the rest of Asia, thanks to our offices there, established decades ago,” Baur added. “We have a large network that allows us to include pre-feedering options in our comprehensive solutions. We lease the boxes we need, so we can operate very flexibly, for example pertaining to where we return the boxes to.”
Thus Atlantic’s customers benefit from a broad range of cost advantages. “Many companies are prepared to accept longer transit periods than air cargo offers, as they gain better and tailor-made services. We collect the goods in a suitable place and prepare them for dispatch, with a focus on easy access to the country’s main ports,” Trefzer pointed out. Atlantic concentrates its activities mainly on Xi’an.
“We recently started a cooperation agreement with Germany, where we also have a business presence,” Trefzer added. “It also offers a series of key advantages. The service has an advantageous impact on direct connections to Switzerland,” he continued, “as we don’t have to waste time managing intermediate stopovers. We’re currently further expanding our direct services to Switzerland and establishing the most favourable routes, which includes selecting the best customs-clearance stations. Our aim is to continuously expand these services and run them twice a month on a scheduled basis.”
“Originally we wanted to get the product up and running in time for the new year festivities,” the two managers explained. “But then measures to contain the outbreak of Covid-19 interfered. Now we have to further fortify our promising alternative transport solution. We’ve been able to take many customers’ wishes on board, with one advantage of our operations being that we can act quite independently – in contrast to large corporations, which often have to take all sorts of constraints into account.”
The managers are confident that “our products will retain their role in the market when the industry returns to normal. We’re convinced that the railways also represent a long-term and cost-effective option that offer the additional advantage of going easier on the environment than airfreight does,” they closed in unison.
