To Italy and Romania

The other connections concern the Liège Logistics Intermodal terminal, a terminal managed by Novandi. The service to Romania is not necessarily new, but its starting point was moved to Liège from Genk, as our sister publication Flows mentioned. This train will depart three times a week with traction provided by RTB Cargo, with intentions to increase it to seven.

The one going to Italy is run by CargoBeamer, a specialist in the rail transport of non-cranable semi-trailers. The link is between the intermodal terminal and Domodossola and Parma. These trains will run six times a week and are open to all the main types of loading units. The aim of these services is to pick up some of the volumes lost by the discontinuation of the rolling highway service between Italy and Germany, CargoBeamer specified.

Second-phase work will focus on the addition of new access points and roadway modifications, the construction of a new goods storage and processing area and a horizontal piggyback loading platform. These developments will enable the rail-road platform to handle up to 45 trains a week, representing an annual capacity of 180,000 containers. Under the terms of the partnership, Liege Airport will acquire a 10 % stake in LLI.

Strategic hub

The partnership with LLI has been forged within a broader European context that is conductive to the growth of rail and river transportation, in alignment with the objectives of the European Union’s Green Deal and its sustainable mobility strategy, Liège Airport noted. Furthermore, the increasing costs of road transportation may make rail freight an even more attractive option in the coming years.

Laurent Jossart, CEO of Liege Airport underlined that the Airport’s strategic vision focuses on positioning itself as a provider of multimodal and sustainable (freight) solutions spanning air, road, rail, inland waterway and ocean transport modes. “This partnership with LLI represents the first tangible manifestation of this vision,” he added. Liege Airport is Europe’s fifth biggest hub for air cargo traffic and handles a broad range of goods that includes perishables, pharmaceuticals, express, e-commerce, medical and humanitarian aid and live animals.

The aim is “to limit the growth in truck traffic between the ports of Antwerp-Bruges and Liège, and to provide companies in Liège and Wallonia with a genuine alternative to road transport for their goods from Liège Trilogiport,” added PAL.

Yves Demeffe, managing director of the Liège Port Authority, commented: “We are almost tripling the total surface area of the terminal (close to 10 hectares), and its terminal’s capacity will increase to 250,000 TEUs. This development will also make it possible to step up our offering of high-value container logistics services on site – such as stuffing and de-stuffing operations and order preparation – and will strengthen the terminal’s role in the sustainable distribution of goods.”

Tackling sharp rail freight decline

The emphasis on reducing road-borne container traffic could provide scope to arrest the sharp decline in rail freight handled at the Port of Liège in recent years – due principally to the crisis affecting the steel industry. Having totalled more than 1.5 million tonnes in 2018, by 2022, the last full year for which annual results are available, it had diminished to 291,186 tonnes.

A spokesperson for PAL confirmed to Railfreight.com that the drop in rail freight traffic had continued in 2023, mainly due to decreasing demand from the steel sector, particularly for products used in automobile manufacturing.

Container rail shuttles currently operate between the Port of Liege and Italy, generating annual traffic of 20,000 swap bodies annually. Around six trains operate per week, three between Liège and Milan and three between Liège and Piacenza. The Port has also seen the operation of trains to and from China.

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Originating from the Yien Vien station near Hanoi in Vietnam, the train’s final destination is Liege in Belgium, after a journey lasting between 25 and 27 days. From Liege, cargo will be transported to the port of Rotterdam using a road leg, to be distributed further.

Link through the China-Europe express

The first trains departed from the Yien Vien station and will firstly transit through China until reaching the city of Zhengzhou. There, they will onboard the China-Europe express train that will take them to Liege. From Zhengzhou, they will follow the route through Kazakhstan and Russia, while the entry point to Europe will be through Belarus. According to Nguyen Hoang Thanh, Deputy General Director of Ratraco, the trains will carry only westbound volumes and return empty on their way back to Vietnam.

Eight trips per month

The Vietnam-Belgium trains are set to become regular on the timetables. Utilising the Zhengzhou connections along the new Silk Road, Ratraco and Maersk Line aim to establish a stable export service with eight trips per month. This means that trains will depart twice a week from the Yien Vien train station.

Liege is an important hub for the Benelux region and its connection to the New Silk Road. It connects with various Chinese cities like Zhengzhou and Chengdu. In fact, China-Liege connections are quite frequent, with departures from the latest destination taking place daily. If the train connection extends to Antwerp, then a new Silk Road hub will emerge, providing more opportunities for cargo distribution also by maritime shipping.

Agreement targets

The two port’s focal point is to enhance their connectivity on the Albert canal axis. Be it by rail or vessels, their main prerequisite is to shift as much cargo as possible from Belgium’s congested roads. The agreement was signed by Jacques Vandermeiren, CEO of the port of Antwerp, Willy Demeyer, president of the autonomous port of Liege and Emile-Louis Bertrand, director-general of the autonomous port of Liege. Their pact will last for three years until 2024.

Clear focus on rail

Rail freight connections constitute one of the central pillars for the cooperation of the two parties. As the port of Antwerp emphasised, “anchoring links between the port of Antwerp and its hinterland is essential. Optimising connections to a logistics hub such as Liege is a decisive factor for our success.”

In this sense, the two ports also want to optimise the utilisation of terminals along the Albert Canal axis. For this to happen, rail freight will need to play a prominent role and help the two ports set up a supply chain with as few obstacles as possible. Developing parallel inland shipping links will also help significantly since “the development of multimodal transport is at the heart of future freight transport”, commented the port of Antwerp.

RailFreight.com visited the Belgian hub to meet some leading figures of Liège’s logistics and transport industry.  We met with Vincent Brassinne, administrator of Liège’s rail freight terminals as well as Bert Selis, VP Commercial Cargo & Logistics at Liège Airport and Dongqing Zhang, Cargo Development Manager at Liège Airport. The interviews will be available in detail during the digital version of the European Silk Road Summit on 10-11 November 2020.

Unique partnership

All partners underlined that collaboration between different freight services is of paramount importance. Specifically, the district’s emergence as a multimodal crossroad with sea, rail, barge and air connections, can be beneficial for everyone, as it attracts more partners. Alibaba is a characteristic example. Despite fierce competition from the Netherlands, the e-commerce company chose Liège as its first European hub. This already resulted in an increase of volumes from China, before the warehouses were even there.

These volumes are for a good part on the train. The rail terminal of Liège is on the China-Europe network since 2018. Currently, it receives five trains from China per week: four from Zhengzhou and one form Chengdu, says Brassinne, while he walks us through the orange ZIH containers, stapled in pairs of three on the terminal. He stresses the advantage that Liège has in terms of position and network. He does not consider aviation a competitor. “We run a side-to-side business with the airport”. The fact that they collaborate with different customers results in an “equal sharing of the pie”, he says.

Liège Airport: a growing logistics platform

Right next to the rail terminal lies the growing and flourishing airport. “Multiple aeroplanes fly from and to China every day, using the airport’s facilities”, Selis explains. “China is gradually becoming more important, it now constitutes a third of the airport’s overall business.” Furthermore, he points out that Liege Airport has become a logistics platform that does not compete, but works together with rail. “It is more of a balance game, that relies on the needs of the customers. For each type of cargo there is a suitable transport mode.”

Nevertheless, the airport has faced challenges during the COVID-19 crisis. Due to a surge in rates for air freight, some of the usual air cargo has shifted to rail, which has proven a more balanced modality during the pandemic. “Some of this cargo may return, but some may not”, acknowledges Zhang. According to Selis, there is a tendency to become more green in transport, which results in a shift to rail. “But there will always be a need for air freight, mostly because of the transit time.”

Liege in the centre

All partners seem to agree on one thing: Liège must grow collectively. With that being said, it is understandable that the different modalities of the European hub not only avoid competing with each other, but are aware that their cooperation can prove extremely beneficial. “There is enough pie for everyone, and this pie is only getting bigger”, concludes Zhang.

Do you want to hear all about the development on the New Silk Road in 2020? On 10 and 11 November the European Silk Road Summit 2020 takes place, this time as an online edition. The impact of the pandemic, the current volumes and the forecasts for the year to come are certainly among the topics on the programme. Have a look here or register here.

The train’s journey passes through various countries, such as Kazakhstan, Russia, and Poland, and takes 20 days. In this way, the shipment of products lasts less than three weeks, making it possible to distribute the goods to their final destination even faster.

A stable connection

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences on the rail freight sector, China proved its ability to operate under these unprecedented conditions, ensuring that rail shipments would continue. Besides the fact that the rail lines towards Europe (including service from Zhengzhou to Liège) resumed in early March 2020, the opening of this new rail line a few months later provided another Europe-China direct connection.

As a result, the Liège container terminal (Novandi Group) has established various partnerships, particularly with the rail operator Linéas, to make sure that the rail traffic between Chengdu and Liège is organised and functioning smoothly.

Intermodality at the center

This new link between the trimodal port and China reinforces intermodality in rail transportation while promoting the environmental benefits that come with it, the Autonomous Port of Liège stated.

“It is thanks to this intermodality that it will be possible to reduce the number of trucks on our roads and respond to the concerns of Europe with a view to the reduction of CO2 emissions in transport”, mentioned, among others, Emile-Louis Bertrand, Director General of the Autonomous Port of Liège.

Not the final destination

“We embarked on this journey to transport cargo to the UK, so the destination is definitely not Liege. But we choose Liege for its convenient location and possibility to distribute the cargo further”, Lei Ming explained. Though the Chinese state-owned company is operating fully under subsidy thus accomplishing its task from the government, they do feel the urge to observe the market better and control its budget.

In 2020, The Ministry of Finance in China has set-up the subsidy deduction target for all local China Europe Express platform companies such as CDIRS, Yuxinou (Chongqing) and WAE (Wuhan) etc. Rail freight operations from China to Europe may not be subsidised for more than 30 per cent of the actual costs.

“Certain missions have to be accomplished. But we also want to use this test shipment between Chengdu and Liege as an opportunity to know the market in Belgium better”, Lei commented. “As of now, we scheduled eight departures to Liege in June, 10-12 departures in July. If the market responds with high demand, we would like to have this connection as a regular service.”

Railfreight Live

Do you want to hear more about CDIRS’s operational plan in 2020? At our first edition of Railfreight Live, Lei Ming from CDIRS will share more insights regarding the new connection to Poznan and their plans of operating overseas warehouses in Europe.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel and watch it live this afternoon (Friday 12 June) 13pm CEST.

Loaded with 82 standard containers of commodities, the first train departed on Wednesday 9 October, according to Chinese news agency Xinhua.net. It is projected to arrive in Liege about 20 days later. The new route is expected to cut the delivery time from Yiwu to Europe by at least one to two days.

eHub

From Liege, the cargo can be further distributed via existing channels. One such channel is eHub, a supply chain management system of Alibaba’s logistics arm Cainiao Network in Liege. This system was set up in June last year, when Alibaba announced 5 cities to be included in this global hub network: Hangzhou, Dubai, Kuala Lumpur, Liege and Moscow.

With the eHub system it aims to create more efficient logistics operations and offer single-day delivery in China and 72-hour delivery across the globe. This is all to meet the rising demand of e-commerce goods, which now make up a large proportion of China’s trade volumes.

Yiwu and e-commerce

Yiwu is among the Chinese cities leading this e-commerce trade. According to Xinhua.net, the express delivery business volume in Yiwu accounts for about one-fifteenth of the nation’s total, while about 40 per cent of cross-border parcels transported by Cainiao Network from AliExpress come from Yiwu and its surrounding areas.

The new service is part of the cooperation between Yiwu City and Electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP), an initiative of Alibaba founder Jack Ma. eWPT was established in Yiwu in June this year. The city of Yiwu and Alibaba then signed an agreement to innovate new trade modes in imports and exports, jointly build smart logistics hubs and develop new types of trade financing.

Liege and BRI

It is not the first service to connect Liege to China by rail. The first direct train service between Liège in Belgium and Zhengzhou in Central China became operative on 24 October 2018.

Rail freight connections from the Belgian hub to China became of particular interest when Alibaba announced to select the city as a European distribution centre and the new location for its headquarters, settling in the airport zone. Liege Airport is already handling e-commerce shipments from the Cainiao network, and it operates the BE-GATE system, a customs platform to simplify the import and export of goods.

European Silk Road Summit

Do you want to know more about the New Silk Road and its latest developments? On 26 and 27 November the European Silk Road Summit takes place in Venlo, the Netherlands. At this two-day international event more than 35 speakers and around 250 delegates will share their experiences, expertise and latest news. Registration for the event is now open. The programme and speakers can be found on the website.

The service offers weekly departures between the hubs, with no additional stops on route. The journey takes 14-16 days, and the train is operated by the Chinese ZIH. It is the second Belgian city on the New Silk Road, after Antwerp was added to the network earlier this year. From Zhengzhou, train services are currently available to Malaszewicze in Poland and Hamburg and Duisburg in Germany.

Alibaba in Liège

The addition of the Belgian city of Liège to the Eurasian railway network is not a coincidence. Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is currently considering opening a European branche, with Liège as a possible homebase. However, the Dutch town of Den Haag has recently entered the competition to house the European branche of the company. Negotiations are still ongoing, according to media reports.

If Liège is to be place of choice, Alibaba will settle in the airport zone of the city. The European logistics complex of the company could grow to 380,000 m2, the size of fifty football fields. It would be the cream on top of the 30th anniversary of cooperation between Wallonia and Henan province.

Henan as a hub

On the Chinese side, Henan is to gain importance on the New Silk Road as the Chinese government has recently announced its plans to launch it as a central hub, from where the distribution of goods to the rest of China should take place.

“Henan already has the infrastructure to support its position as a hub. There is an extensive railway network to all corners of the country. Nine of the mainlines run through the province, in addition to four sublines. Moreover, it hosts a high density of highway, spanning six thousand kilometers. Henan also has the advantage of being flat, in contrast to the mountainous south of the country”, explained Letty Zhu, who works as a lecturer at the Breda University of Applied Sciences earlier.