Last year, China-Europe trains operated 6363 trains. Among them, Central Europe (Wuhan) shipped 423 trains throughout the year, up by 12.2% year-on-year.
Among the 59 cities that have opened China-Europe trains, Wuhan ranks fifth in terms of traffic volume, following Chengdu, Chongqing, Xi and Zhengzhou. What did Central Europe (Wuhan) do? How much room for improvement?
Chloe Wang introduced that last year, China-Europe train (Wuhan) not only increased its freight volume, but also gradually expanded its line coverage. At the same time, the value of transported goods has been greatly improved.
As for the new line, the China-Europe train (Wuhan) has been in line with the China-Vietnam train, and the Central Asian cotton yarn return train has entered China via Horgos Port, and newly opened Wuhan-London, Riga train, Manzhouli-Wuhan timber train, "Guangdong-Hong Kong-China" train and "Tenth China-Europe" train.
At this point, China-Europe Banlie (Wuhan) has opened a land transportation channel through Alashankou, Manzhouli, Erenhot, Pingxiang and Horgos, which can go directly to London, England and connect cities in Yichang, Xiangyang, Shiyan and other provinces.
Chloe Wang said that these lines were added because of customer demand. For example, the "Guangdong-Hong Kong-China" train originated from the demand of enterprises such as Jiuzhoutong (600998).
Jiuzhoutong, headquartered in Wuhan, as a pharmaceutical commercial circulation enterprise, often imports a large number of drugs and needs to be transported to the mainland from China and Hongkong. For a long time, Jiuzhoutong has transported imported drugs to Shanghai through the sea passage, and then distributed them in the nearby Suzhou warehouse.
With the continuous development of the company and the gradual increase of business volume, Jiuzhoutong found that Suzhou warehouse could no longer bear the "excessive burden". At the same time, the practice of China-Europe trains proves that railway transportation takes half as long as sea transportation, and Jiuzhoutong hopes to build a new warehouse in Wuhan to undertake the distribution function of Suzhou warehouse.
After Kyushu opened to Han Ou International to express the demand for railway transportation drugs, Han Ou International also conducted a more in-depth investigation on the market. As free trade ports, China and Hongkong have always been transit points for products from Japanese, Korean, Southeast Asian and other countries and regions to enter the mainland market of China. Moreover, China and Hongkong are also one of Hubei's major foreign trade partners, and many products from Hubei are exported there. Taking the data of 20 18 as an example, Hubei's exports to China and Hongkong reached 28.45 billion yuan.
However, like the mode of transportation of imported drugs from Jiuzhoutong, they also take more shipping channels. In order to facilitate those customers who have requirements for transportation timeliness and relatively controllable costs, the "Guangdong-China" train was opened.
With the gradual expansion of line coverage, the volume of China-Europe trains (Wuhan) has also increased year by year. In 20 18, 423 trains were shipped, with a year-on-year increase of 12.2%.
In terms of the value of goods, it has also been greatly improved by expanding the categories of goods transported. In terms of imported products, it has expanded from milk, candy and wine to pianos and cars. In export products, from clothing, tea, crayfish to electromechanical, medicine and so on.
Chloe Wang revealed that compared with 20 17, the freight value of China-Europe train (Wuhan) increased rapidly last year, and the annual freight value approached 10 billion yuan.
Among the 59 cities running China-Europe trains, Wuhan ranked first with 20 18, and tied for the top five with Chengdu, Chongqing, Xi and Zhengzhou. These five cities operate 5,439 trains in China and Europe, accounting for 85.48% of the total shipments of trains in China and Europe.
This kind of achievement is already good. However, compared with its best performance, the shipment volume of CEIBS (Wuhan) has declined in recent years.
As the second city in China to run a China-Europe train, Wuhan got up very early. 20 1 1, Chongqing is the first city in China to open a China-Europe train. The following year, Central Europe (Wuhan) also carried out trial operation, and normal operation began on 20 14. At the same time, Chengdu, Zhengzhou, Xi and other cities have also opened China-Europe trains.
At that time, Han Ou International explored a lot. Because not only large enterprises need transportation, but also small and medium-sized enterprises have related needs, but the number is relatively small, so Han Ou International has successively opened customized special trains, public railways, bulk transportation and LCL services to serve them. At the same time, according to the needs of enterprises, we have continuously expanded routes, and successively opened routes such as Moscow, Russia, Hamburg, Germany and Lyon, France.
It is noted that some enterprises in coastal cities such as Guangzhou and Shenzhen also have railway transportation needs. Han Ou International, in conjunction with Wuhan Railway Bureau, has opened the "Guangzhou-Wuhan" and "Shenzhen-Wuhan" round-trip lines, joined hands with Yangluo Port, and relied on the river-sea direct liner and Luhantai liner from Wuhan to Shanghai Yangshan Port to realize the combined transport of molten iron.
A series of measures made China Europe Train (Wuhan) rank second in China with 164 train in the second year of normal operation. At that time, Chongqing ranked first, with 20 15 shipments of 257.
I recommend from not having enough to the second place in the country. What did "Hanyu New Europe" bring to Hubei?
20 16 the situation began to change subtly. This year, Chengdu came from behind, surpassing Chongqing and Wuhan in one fell swoop and taking the first place. The ranking of Zhengzhou, another latecomer, has also climbed, and Wuhan has retreated to fourth place.
20 17 is relatively stable, and Wuhan is still in the fourth place. Last year, it fell back one place because it was surpassed by Xi 'an, the last one in the top five. At the same time, Zhengzhou was overtaken and Xi ranked third.
It is worth noting that in 20 17, the shipment volume of China-Europe trains (Xi 'an) was only 194, and it increased significantly to 1235 last year.
From the second to the fifth place in China, what has China-Europe Train (Wuhan) experienced?
Obviously, as the specific starting point of the "Belt and Road Initiative", all localities are scrambling to run China-Europe trains. More and more cities join in, which directly leads to intensified competition, and then share the cake.
20 1 1 only Chongqing, 20 12 Wuhan is more. By the end of 20 18, 59 cities had opened China-Europe trains. Cities that used to serve China-Europe trains (Wuhan), such as Guangzhou and Shenzhen mentioned above, all started China-Europe trains on 20 17.
So, do these cities have the need to run China-Europe trains?
The repetition of trains between China and Europe is known to some extent by people in the industry.
Ma Bin, an assistant researcher at the Russian Center for Central Asian Studies, Institute of International Studies, Fudan University, believes that for cities with insufficient supply and inconvenient transportation, the structure of trains between China and Europe can be optimized through line cancellation and merger.
In the past, in order to meet the transportation needs of neighboring provinces and cities, CEIBS will provide transportation services for goods within the range of 1000 km. Taking China Europe Train (Wuhan) as an example, the inter-provincial trains of "Huan Yi Europe" and "Han Xiang Europe" have been opened successively, as well as the above-mentioned "Mi"-shaped rail-rail combined transport with Wuhan as the center, and the hot metal combined transport has been realized by relying on Shanghai.
However, according to the statistics of China Material Storage and Transportation Association, the competition of goods between China and Europe has expanded to 1500 km, and many cities and even the whole country take goods. In order to grab the supply of goods, they do not hesitate to artificially reduce the logistics cost through a large number of subsidies and fight price wars for the number of lines.
What impressed Chloe Wang was that some cities also launched special prices for Wuhan goods. A 40-foot container can reach Europe for $2,500, and the average price under normal circumstances is around $6,000.
Chloe Wang believes that this kind of competition seems to be beneficial to enterprises, but it is not conducive to the healthy development of the industry.
In fact, the Ministry of Finance has asked local governments to lower the subsidy standard for trains in China and Europe, and proposed that the subsidy should not exceed 50% of the freight in 20 18, 40% in 20 19 and 30% in 2020.
The number of fights has also brought about the consequences of "traffic jams".
Chloe Wang gave an example. At first, it only took 12 days-14 days to get from Wuhan to Duisburg. It took more than 20 days to get there when the traffic jam was the worst last year. "Then others might as well choose to go by sea, and the long-term damage is still the Central European train."
These phenomena exist objectively, which is the reason why the ranking of China Europe Train (Wuhan) continues to fall behind.
However, the above-mentioned China-Europe freight service providers believe that under the same competitive environment, some places are still developing steadily, and China-Europe (Wuhan) should also reflect on and learn from the experience of its competitors.
For example, from 20 16, Chengdu ranked first for three consecutive years. Although Chongqing has retreated to the second place since 20 16, it has maintained its position for three consecutive years.
Chengdu has made great efforts on the newly opened line. 20 18 enters the hinterland of Europe to the west, adding special routes such as Vienna, Budapest and bremerhaven; To the south, the "Rongou+"ASEAN international sea-rail combined transport corridor and the all-railway international combined transport corridor will be operated stably, connecting more than ten coastal and border cities in China.
Chongqing has made more innovations in the service target. With the help of "Dongfeng" that Chongqing is a pilot city for cross-border e-commerce import and a comprehensive experimental zone for cross-border e-commerce, in 20 18, Chongqing applied railway international postal parcel service as the main business entity of cross-border e-commerce.
All these have brought increments to the opening of China-Europe trains.
Han Ou International itself is aware of these problems.
Chloe Wang said that in the future, it will further integrate the market demand of Hubei Province and neighboring provinces and cities, and expand multimodal transport by rail, land, molten iron and air. It will also follow up the construction of six economic corridors under the Belt and Road Initiative, namely, China-Mongolia-Russia, New Eurasian Continental Bridge, China-Central Asia-West Asia, China-Indochina Peninsula, China-Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar, and actively open other routes. In addition, it will actively expand the service industry chain, take advantage of the opportunity that Wuhan has become the latest batch of cross-border e-commerce comprehensive experimental zones, and serve new formats such as cross-border e-commerce trade, thus enhancing the shipment volume of China-Europe trains (Wuhan).
Qin Zunwen, president of Hubei "Belt and Road" Research Institute, gave another suggestion to CEIBS (Wuhan). In his view, China-Europe (Wuhan) should not only increase its shipments, but also do a good job in the advantages that have been formed before, such as returning to operation and enhancing the value of goods, which will be particularly important after the competition returns to rationality.
This is because, as far as logistics costs are concerned, the departure and return of China-Europe trains are the most cost-effective in the state of 1: 1. However, most of the trips in local competitions are return trips, and less return trips lead to higher transportation costs.
Among the five major cities in Central Europe last year, the trips of Xi and Zhengzhou exceeded the return trips. Of all the trains in China and Europe, there are also many round trips. Among them, there are 2690 return trains, accounting for 42.3% of the total number of trains.
China-Europe trains (Wuhan) return more than return. The two data are 249 trains and 174 trains respectively, and the ratio should be as close as possible to 1: 1 in the future.
At the same time, as mentioned above, the value of goods transported by China-Europe trains (Wuhan) is also increasing year by year. Even if the volume of goods is difficult to catch up in the short term, if the value of goods can continue to increase, it will conform to the direction of transformation and development. After all, the quality of operation is the ultimate pursuit.
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Editor Wu Ling
Hubei Daily Media Group produced Fulcrum magazine.