The Freight Railway line linking China and Rotterdam is a success story. Its introduction underscores the importance of reliable and cheap transport infrastructure between nations or indeed continents, and also the enhancement of intercultural exchange. The project is a classic example of how entrepreneurs can maximize profits servicing their urgent cross-border and intercontinental orders.

This contrasts sharply with servicing the orders through sea freight which is cheaper but slower and air freight which is faster but too costly. China-Rotterdam Freight Railway Line is definitely a success story for the growth of commerce, business, economic development and trade between China and Rotterdam in particular and the Netherlands in general.

 

G & D Europe - The Success Story

Trade between China and Europe has been the key to economic growth. But distance and logistics have always been an impediment. Entrepreneurs in Europe who have seen the volumes of orders for their products from China skyrocket have always grappled with the headache of transportation.

When the orders are urgent, the only option of transportation has hitherto been by air which eats significantly into the profits because of the prohibitive cost of air freighting. For normal orders, freight by ship was the preferred mode and although cheap, it took agonizingly long to reach the customer.

This was for to and from China. With the advent of the railway line linking China and Rotterdam, there has been tremendous improvement of trade between the two destinations.

Jan-Paul Vegt, a Dutch, and his Chinese business partner, Yonggao Liu met at the university while studying business. In 2010, they co-founded a Dutch-based company, G&D Europe, for exporting organic baby food and milk to China. They frequent China to seek new business or orders from existing clients.

 

 

In one instance, the two were attending the 16th Shanghai Children, Baby and Maternity Products Expo in Shanghai, China, to seek for business opportunities as they serviced existing clients. As they acquired new business, they also realized that the supplies they had delivered previously were depleted. As a startup company, they had to comprehensively deal with the problem.

Back in their hotel room in Shaghai, they faced their logistics concerns head on. When they went through their transport costs for the past 6 months, they couldn't come to terms with the fact that 3 large urgent orders had cost them a whopping 4,000,000 RMB, equivalent to US$ 600,000, to export the goods to China via airfreight. They looked at the sea freight and remembered that it had once delayed their shipment for two months.

It was then that they decided to try the rail transport to see if there would be any difference. This was a viable solution because it was cheaper than air freighting and faster than sea freighting.

Jan-Paul Vegt and Liu Yonggao with their analytical study thresh the main problems contributing a majoritarian transportation option that companies use today to trade with China: the China Railway Express that plies the China-Rotterdam Freight Railway Line.

With their G & D Europe, Jan-Paul Vegt and Liu Yonggao have provided a perfect case study that is definitely useful to a myriad of entrepreneurs especially those with interest in export/import.

 

Is Train Freight a Viable Option?

Jan-Paul Vegt and Liu Yonggao's G & D Europe success story answers this question satisfactorily. The railway line linking China and Rotterdam is undoubtedly the perfect answer to large entrepreneurs who can now access a fairly fast freighting option that is more favorable than sea and air.

This rail transport is not only beneficial to commercial growth between Europe and China, but also between Europe and Asia, the so-called Eurasia.

The China-Rotterdam Freight Railway Line is part of Chinese government's 40 billion US$ initiative to actualize the New Silk Road which in essence is a resurrection of the centuries-old, once famous Silk Road that transported goods between East Asia and the Mediterranean, only this time it incorporates road, sea and air. The idea of the New Silk Road was mooted in 2013 with an initial funding of 3 billion US$ which was later hiked to 40 billion US$ in 2014.

The first freight train on this line arrived in the Port of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, which is Europe's busiest port, in mid 2015, marking an important epoch in commerce between Europe and East Asia, particularly China.

This practical vision has seen tremendous growth in commerce in Eurasia with companies smiling all the way to the bank. With the inclusion of the rail infrastructure, transport, which had been hitherto limited and a hindrance to commercial growth is no longer an issue.

G & D Europe have established a strategy that can ship goods to China in land transport, particularly by rail. Planning and calculation of this great entrepreneurial idea gives results in two basic points. First is the level of speed and time it takes which means a month less than the time it takes to ship goods by sea. The other point is the reference to the economic sense, where about 2 million RMB or US$ 300,000 is saved in the G & D story.

In a nutshell, China's ambitious project of the China-Rotterdam Freight Railway Line, and to a larger extent the Silk Road, is a good example of how to spur intercontinental commercial growth and promote cross-cultural harmony. It also illustrates that an idea is only as good as its implementation.

Millions of people have no doubt benefitted directly or indirectly through this innovative rail project.

 

 

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