Nippon Express enhances high-speed rail cargo service between major Chinese cities

26 May 2009

Nippon Express Co., Ltd. (Masanori Kawai, President), has recently upgraded its cargo transport operations in China by adding high-speed rail cargo service between four key cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou).

Nippon Express has thus far mostly relied on trucks for transport within China, but it has begun a modal shift to more energy-efficient rail transport, especially for long-haul shipments, in the hopes of reducing its environmental impact. In addition to creating a lesser environmental burden, this move also reduces lead time substantially from that needed for conventional truck transport and cuts transport costs.

This service utilizes high-speed freight trains run every day by Chinese railway companies that, with a maximum speed of 160km/hr, enable Shenzhen North Station to be reached in about 17 hours and Beijing in about 12 hours from Shanghai West Station.

Rail transport in China has long faced issues of safety and punctuality but a series of transport tests conducted by Nippon Express and designed also to test vibration resistance have confirmed the safety of the rail lines employed by the new service. Assurances of travel time reliability on these lines have been secured from railway operators.

In future, this rail transport service will be combined with Shanghai Super Express, a high-speed RORO ship that sails between Hakata and Shanghai in 26 hours, to provide a multimodal service allowing customers to quickly send small-lot shipments of goods from Japan to markets in China.

By adding this rail transport service to its lineup, Nippon Express will be even better able to support customers' logistics to, from, and within China - from shipments of parts and materials to the transport of finished products - via a network in China offering a variety of transport modes.