DHL Global Forwarding has added Taiwan into its pioneering and rapidly expanding North Asia multimodal network with a sea link between Taiwan and mainland China, offering customers the full-container load door-to-door service, DHL Railing. The new connection linking Taichung port to Shanghai, effectively plugs into the rail link into Europe via Warsaw from Suzhou, which also serves as a base for over 10,000 Taiwan-funded export-oriented enterprises.
The sea link that added Japan and now Taiwan into the network means that customers all over North Asia now have an alternative to sea and airfreight – as do their trading partners across Europe – and access to benefits such as reduced transit times, costs and CO2 emissions.
Similar to the Japan service originating from Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe and Hakata launched last year, the new multimodal Taiwan – China-Europe service will offer freight costs savings of up to 85 per cent and CO2 emissions by up to 90 per cent compared to air freight with shorter transit times than ocean freight. The seamless scheduled service will use a combination of trucking, sea and rail solutions to move cargo from Taiwan into DHL Global Forwarding China’s rail freight solution which reduces the delivery time by between 10 and 21 days, depending on origin and destination pairs, compared to solely using ocean freight.
“Imports and exports form the main source of Taiwan’s economic growth momentum. Taiwan’s foreign trade amounted to US$588 billion in 2014 with exports and trade surplus hitting a new high,” said Charles Kaufmann chief executive officer for North Asia. “With a foreign trade dependence rate of 111 per cent and 20th ranking in the leading exporters and importers in world merchandise trade, it is important that Taiwan remains closely integrated into the global trade network to maintain competitiveness.”
Steve Huang, CEO, DHL Global Forwarding China said: “Our new service extension comes at a time whe n China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative – an economic initiative of up to US$21 trillion – is taking shape and expected to strengthen cross-border economic ties in markets between Europe and Asia. Our multimodal network directly links Taiwan to mainland China and Europe, both of which are among Taiwan’s top five trading nations, bringing more opportunities to Taiwan enterprises. In addition, the European Commission recently announced that it is exploring negotiations on investment with Taiwan as part of a trade globalisation plan, showing the island’s growing importance in the global marketplace.”
Kenny Mok, managing director, DHL Global Forwarding Taiwan added: ” Taiwan has been pushing different initiatives – including the free economic pilot zones plan which looks at key high-end, high value-added service industries such as logistics for innovation – to accelerate its integration into the regional economy. Taiwan’s industries will need to rely on highly specialised global logistics services to meet the requirements of international trade. The combination of cost-efficient and faster access to markets offered by our multimodal service has created business opportunities for customers in many industries and enhanced their competitive edge. We know that this innovative solution will also appeal to Taiwanese exporters and importers as they capitalise on the growth opportunities.”
Earlier this year, DHL added a third route to its China- Europe multimodal network – the westbound and eastbound Zhengzhou-Hamburg service which complements DHL Global Forwarding’s two established routes. The first is a weekly scheduled block train service along the trans-Kazakh West Corridor rail service that originates from Chengdu, a hub for high tech goods, automotive and other industries, and the main distribution center for Western China, to Lodz in Poland. The second – also weekly – via the trans-Siberian North Corridor serves the manufacturing and commercial centers of Shanghai, Suzhou and surrounding areas and runs both westbound and eastbound services between Suzhou and Warsaw.
In 2014, DHL pioneered the first temperature-controlled China-Europe rail service, providing customers with temperature-sensitive products year-round access to this cost-effective shipping route regardless of the weather conditions.
