On October 6, the first batch of 21 containers from the China-Asia Railway Express line was loaded and shipped from Phase II Terminal of the Nansha Port Area of Guangzhou Port to Indonesia. For the first time, the China-Asia Railway Express has adopted the “railway-lighter transport-sea transport” rail-water transport method to go overseas from Guangdong, opening up the “Central Asia-Guangzhou-Southeast Asia” logistics channel to the sea, and realizing the seamless multimodal transport between the “Silk Road Economic Belt” and the “21st  Century Maritime Silk Road”.

The cargo exported from the Nansha Port Area this time is potash fertilizer imported from Uzbekistan, weighing 1,113 tons and worth about 128,000 US dollars. This batch of cargo departed from Chukursay, Uzbekistan, and was transported to Jiaoxin Port across Dalang via road transit, and then transferred by lighter from Jiaoxin Bonded Warehouse to Nansha Comprehensive Bonded Zone by means of cargo circulation between bonded warehouses. Then, one-to-one reloading of bulk cargo from railway containers to marine containers was completed in the comprehensive protection zone of Nansha Port Area, and finally, the cargo was shipped from Nansha Port Area, the starting point of the “Maritime Silk Road” to the destination Indonesia. Through the seamless multimodal transport by rail, land and sea, the intersection of “Silk Road Economic Belt” and “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” was completed in Nansha Port Area.

Uzbekistan is located in the “heartland” of the ancient Silk Road, and only in terms of potash fertilizer, it can provide more than 40,000 tons of production capacity for Central Asian producers and Southeast Asian buyers every year. Guangzhou Nansha Port and China Railway Express have complemented each other’s advantages and adopted the multimodal transport to further extend international logistics channels and provide more cross-border logistics options for countries and regions along the “Belt and Road”.

Guangzhou Port Works With Concerted Efforts to Ensure Smooth Transportation of Potash Fertilizer

Guangzhou Port Co., Ltd. attached great importance to the transportation of Central Asian potash fertilizer, and held the “Special Meeting on the Operation of China-Asia Sea-Rail Multimodal Transport Railway Return Line”. With the Production Business Department as the overall coordinator, related operators from Guangzhou Port Logistics, Shipping Company, Nansha Phase II, Nansha Phase III worked as team members. Guangzhou Port Logistics designed the full logistics transportation plan, Shipping Company’s “shuttle buses" provide lightering service, and Nansha Phase II and Nansha Phase III worked together to complete the cargo reloading and loading into the large ships. The operating companies of Guangzhou Port cooperated closely and, with the support of the port department, gave full play to the advantages of the sea-rail multimodal transport to efficiently complete the transportation of Central Asian potash fertilizer from Dalang to Nansha Port and the reloading work.

Guangzhou Port Logistics Co., Ltd., which is responsible for designing this logistics plan, was awarded the “2020 National Advanced Logistics Enterprise” in September this year. In recent years, the Company has paid attention to the development of the multi-modal transport business and actively carried out the “transformation from bulk transport to container transport”, maintaining an average annual growth rate of 26.42% in transportation volume. On January 20, 2020, the "Central South and Southwest-Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao-Maritime Silk Road” Highway-Rail-River-Sea Container Multimodal Transport Demonstration Project submitted by Guangzhou Port Logistics Co., Ltd. was successfully selected into the List of Guangdong Province Multimodal Transport Demonstration Projects.

The Customs Administration Ensures Efficient and Smooth Customs Clearance of China-Asia Railway Express Cargo

Guangzhou Customs has given strong support to the transit transportation of the China-Asia Railway Express, and formulated 15 detailed measures to promote China Railway Express to undertake air and sea cargo transfers, including allowing enterprises to independently choose customs clearance modes, reducing the number of customs declarations to reduce customs declaration costs, strengthening the construction of hub stations, and promoting the development of multimodal transport services. The accumulated customs clearance time for the China-Asia Railway Express cargo is 1 hour in the entry and exit area of the Nansha Port area to ensure that the cargo is waiting to leave the port according to the established shipping schedule. This customs clearance has realized the information operation of the entire chain of “arrival, transfer, container change and customs clearance” of the cargo with remote monitoring and management.

Developing a New Pattern in Dual Cycles, and Providing Enterprises with Stable Multimodal Transport Channels

At present, China is promoting the formation of a new development pattern in which the domestic overall cycle is taken as the mainstay, and the domestic and international dual cycles promote each other. The successful transportation of the China-Asia Railway Express cargo this time, coupled with the advantages of the fast and convenient transportation on the Eurasian Land Bridge and rich routes in Nansha Port Area, provides a stable international logistics channel for domestic enterprises to “go global” as an important measure to further integrate into the “Belt and Road” Initiative, accelerate the pace of opening-up and promote economic development.

Nansha Port Area is located in the geometric center of China’s most economically developed Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, with an excellent location. Close to the main sources of goods in the Pearl River Delta, the cost of integrated logistics for enterprises to import and export through Nansha Port is the lowest. At the same time, the port area is seamlessly connected with the three-dimensional transportation network composed of railways, express ways, inland rivers, etc. and has unique advantages of river-sea transport and sea-rail transport. Nansha Port Area enjoys the advantages of “multi-zone” such as national-level new zone, bonded port zone, and free trade pilot zone, with complete policies and fast customs clearance. In the future, Nansha Port Area will rely on increasingly complete logistics and warehousing facilities to build itself into a distribution center for high-quality goods such as wood, frozen products, plastic pellets and food, develop into a logistics hub port integrating multimodal transport by water, land and rail in South China, actively assume the important task of connecting the inland provinces with overseas countries as an gateway hub, and build a major channel to the sea for the Pan-Pearl River Delta economic hinterland to fully participate in the construction of the “Belt and Road”. (Text by Yu Wen and He Jiali, Picture by Zhu Junkun)