China cars may take train to Europe

It is logical. Rail could play a major role transporting an expected future (three to five years) upsurge in Chinese car exports to Europe.

In anticipation of this, Netherlands-based Koopman Logistics Group has established a joint venture with a prominent international rail freight service organization. The group’s subsidiary, Koopman Car Terminal, covers 350,000 sq m and has storage capacity for up to 13,000 vehicles at the port of Amsterdam.

Ernst Cooiman, managing director of the Koopman car terminal, said about imports so far:

‘In all cases, the importer did not have a Europe-wide approval and started to import vehicles on an individual basis. That made a smooth and successful introduction impossible.’

Ernst Cooiman said an option to get the cars from China to Europe was rail transport. ‘From China rail solutions are a good possibility, especially from inland plants to Russia and CIS countries. At the moment, there is still railway capacity available, although there is a growing shortage of platform wagons and railcars to carry vehicles.’ (Rest assured that in our illustration the car model, at least, is Chinese.)

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