The Deutsche Post subsidiary DHL Global Forwarding is evaluating combined rail-air shipments between Chinaand Germany.
“We are presently looking into this model,” confirmed DHL division’s CEO Chris Fahy. According to him the goods would be consolidated in the production centres of eastern China and brought to either Urumqi in the far northwest of the country or to Almaty in Kazakhstan by train. There, the cargo would be transferred on board of freight planes for their further journey to Germany.
“This concept is under thorough scrutiny as far as pricing, lead times and customer demand is concerned,” he said. Asked about partnering Deutsche Bahn AG as potential co-loader on their cargo trains that might be deployed between Beijing and Hamburg he said that he would not exclude such collaboration.
“But only on condition that these transports are absolutely neutral and open for many market participants,” he emphasised. On 9 January, a container-laden train managed by Deutsche Bahn in cooperation with five other railway companies left Beijing on its 10,000 km journey to Hamburg.
By deploying this ¡®Eurasian Land Bridge’ called test train the partnering railroad companies want to evaluate thepossibility of scheduled traffic on this route. According toan announcementtheir main aim istaking away futuremarket shares fromboth ocean and airfreight.
Although earlier announced as taking 20 days the inaugural train made it from Beijing to Hamburg in only 15 days which could mean the land bridge could pose a real threat to general (consolidated) air cargo if the trains can continue to run on schedule between China and Germany.
Meanwhile, Fahy further explained that his company intends to strengthen the ocean-air traffic via Dubai dramatically. “Our present growth rate of this segment is about 30 per cent,” he reveals.
Accordingly, DHL Global Forwarding momentarily is pumping in huge amounts of euros in new facilities at Jebel Ali Airport, the neighboring Free Zone as well as the Logistics City adjacent to the airport.
As a result he expects a dramatic reduction of transfer times from ocean vessel to freight plane. “Today this process takes no less than 24 hours. In future we’ll cut it down to a mere four hours,” he predicts.
In addition to ocean-air traffic DHL Global Forwarding will utilise Dubai also as their future hub for road feeder services throughout the Middle East and major gateway for flights to and from India.
“There are a lot of pharmaceuticals being produced in India that we want to fly via Dubai to our final customers,” Fahy note as an example. To handle these temperature sensitive and thus highly delicate shipments, his firm is presently building a number of cool rooms at Dubai’s new Jebel Ali Airport. – Heiner Siegmund
