Brussels (People’s Daily) - The first container train from the city of Chengdu in China recently reached Liège, a city along the Meuse River in Belgium’s French-speaking Wallonia region several days ago, increasing the number of China Railway Express routes running between China cities and Liège to three.
Mainly loaded with personal protective equipment for the health workers in the UK to support them in their continuous fight against Covid-19, the train ran along the Silk Road with a transit time of only 14 days.
The new block train service will be established as a regular service running twice a week from June 2020.
“Today digital trade and e-commerce are becoming an inseparable part of the economy. E-commerce has already improved business value by fundamentally changing the ways products are conceived, marketed and delivered. The real impact is its ability to reduce costs and prices and make doing business more efficient. In this perspective, this new rail freight line between the Chinese city of Chengdu and Liege completes the range of multimodal freight connections available in the Wallonia Region of Belgium, allowing all stakeholders to choose the more suitable logistics solution,” said Michel Kempeneers of the Wallonia Export-Investment Agency (AWEx).
“By putting up together the EU-China Logistics Incubator, AWEX, Liege Airport and Logistics in Wallonia wanted to show that collaborations with China are not one-shot stories for Wallonia and that we wanted to build longterm relationships. The event of today is one more milestone in this process” said Wanglin Liu, manager of the EU-China Logistics Incubator.
Bernard Piette, general manager of Logistics in Wallonia said, “Liège has undoubtedly become one of the most important logistics hubs in Western Europe. This is the result of combined efforts from private companies and public authorities. The range of logistics services available in such a concentrated area is quite unique and this new connection with Chengdu adds one more asset to our connectivity with the rest of the world.”