Over the past ten years, China and the European Union were considered to be the largest global trade partners with the trade volume valued at more than USD 600 billion in 2014. Although the Chinese boom has seen some deceleration effects, the US integrator UPS has added a less-than-container load (LCL) option for its China-to-Europe rail shipments.
The service is available from Zhengzhou (China) to Hamburg (Germany), and is an add-on to the two full container load services (FCL) launched in June 2014. The company claims that customers who took advantage of the FCL rail service experienced cost savings of up to 65%t versus airfreight and time savings of nearly 40% compared to a traditional FCL ocean service on the same routes.
FCL solutions are offered from Chengdu to Lodz (Poland), and from Zhengzhou to Hamburg. The service is offered on a weekly basis.