From pier to rails

SWIFT Transport Company has organized a regular multimodal service to deliver cargo in containers from Vietnam to Russia.  Rail traffic from the Asia-Pacific region to Russia will only increase in the future.  

The cargoes were shipped by sea from the Vietnamese ports of Haiphong and Ho Chi Minh City to Dalian (China) and then transported to Moscow by railway through the Zabaikalsk border crossing point. The first 50 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) from Vietnam arrived in the capital by railway on August 13. The cargo included food products and sporting goods. The total transit time to Moscow was 30 days.

"From Vietnam to China we deliver by sea and from the Celestial Empire to Russia - by train. For us this is the most optimal route in terms of quality and regularity of cargo delivery," says Swift-Rus Managing Director Alexander Podylov.

"Despite the downward trend in the dynamics of trade between Russia and Vietnam, the multimodal transport plays a key role in the transport service of mutual trade between the two countries", Andrey Tikhomirov, the head of the Macroeconomics and Forecasting Methodology Department of IERT JSC told Gudok. "Transportation is both in conventional and refrigerated containers, which allows us to transport almost the entire range of imported goods from Vietnam".

The opening of the new service between Vietnam and Russia is due to the increased demand of shippers, who previously used traditional sea routes to deliver their goods from the Asia-Pacific region (APR) to Russia.

"At the moment, manufacturers are having trouble finding logistics solutions. At the same time, there is a growing demand of Vietnamese exporters to deliver goods to Russia," Peter Airapetov, Deputy General Director of New Logistics LLC, a member of the working group on ensuring efficient operation of border crossings in the East-West railway service of the presidium of the Eurasian Railway Freight Union told Gudok. "Customers are ready for shipment of all kinds of consumer goods by rail from Vietnam, in particular furniture, clothes, shoes, and food products, while special conditions apply in August for general cargoes not requiring phytosanitary and veterinary control".

Gudok wrote earlier that Russian operators assist in meeting the increased demand for cargo delivery from APR countries to Russia by overland routes. In spring 2022 they offered the market several new Vietnam - Russia route options. 

For example, in late May, TransContainer PJSC organized a test shipment of a container train from the Vietnamese city of Hanoi to the Moscow railway station of Elektrougli. New Logistics LLC announced the opening of a door-to-door service for cargo delivery from Vietnam to Moscow in June.

Due to the projected growth of trade in this direction owing to the reorientation of Russian consumers from European to Asian markets, multimodal and rail routes should be in demand.

"Most likely, the intensity of traffic along them will only increase in the medium term," says Igor Smirnov, Deputy Director for Freight Transport and Logistics at the Infrastructure Economics Center.

Moreover, according to Yuri Shurygin, General Director of the International Export Promotion Agency (IEXPA), the transportation service with Vietnam is quite promising. Today it is attractive for Russian companies to partially relocate their production facilities, localize manufacturing there and have it branded as "made in Vietnam". After that, the products made there can be sold with preferences and often even duty-free in most countries of the Asian region.

The company's second train arrived in Moscow on August 20.

Sergey Volkov

31 august 2022