Speedy sea-rail solution
The new Rijeka Land-Sea Express service will improve Central European countries’ links to the supply chain. Rail connections from Piraeus to Belgrade and Budapest via Rijeka were launched in October.
Another branch has been added to the new Silk Road, providing further connections from the Croatian coast to Central European hinterlands. The Adriatic Gate Container Terminal (AGCT), a Croatian subsidiary of the Filipino corporation International Container Terminal Services Inc (ICTSI), is the key hub for the new Rijeka Land-Sea Express service (RLSE).
This intermodal maritime solution is one of the triggers prompting ICTSI to increase the AGCT’s capacities to 600,000 teu on the maritime side of the equation, and to 360,000 teu annually for the railway terminal on the quay.
Large gateway, small gateway
It didn’t come as much of a surprise to learn that the service was initiated by Cosco Shipping, together with its railfreight operations partner Ocean Rail Logistics, which has been officially registered as an operator since the end of 2017. The RLSE connects Piraeus and Rijeka nonstop as a scheduled express maritime service, offering an interface to Rijeka–Budapest–Rijeka and Rijeka–Belgrade–Rijeka rail links. The move brings Serbia as well as Hungary a little closer for Asian exporters.
Ocean Rail Logistics is one of the strategic instruments for the shipping line Cosco, which has made the railways an integral ingredient of its logistics concept. On 15 November, for example, the railfreight arm took over for Cosco 60% of the shares in Piraeus Europe Asia Rail Logistics (Pearl), a rail operator from Greece.
The RLSE has been designed specifically to improve connections for growing Central European consumer markets. Combining maritime and rail transport services in the Rijeka Land-Sea Express and using Piraeus and Rijeka as intermediate hubs, enables Cosco to offer shippers transit times of 32 days from eastern China to Budapest, and even transit times of just 28 days from southern China.
