|
London - Rail could play a major role when it comes to transporting an expected future upsurge in Chinese car exports to Europe, believes a leading European vehicle logistics service provider.
In anticipation of that development, Netherlands-based Koopman Logistics Group has established a joint venture with a prominent international rail freight service organisation.
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: Chinese vehicle manufacturers had focused primarily on exporting to other Asian countries, North Africa, Russia, the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) and some Eastern European markets. Although several Chinese brands had already run trials in Western Europe, notably with SUVs (sport utility vehicles), they had so far found it difficult to break into that market.
"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," explained Cooiman.
However, he said, the biggest challenge for Chinese car manufacturers seeking to export vehicles to Western Europe was to improve the crash test results for their vehicles to reduce previous fierce criticism of their performance and win the confidence of customers.
Other issues include meeting EU environmental requirements for engine and exhaust emissions and further improving production quality to reach Western European standards.
"Most car manufacturers in China have now changed their strategies and delayed their exports to Western Europe for three to five years," said Cooiman. "But we are convinced that within a few years the export of Chinese vehicles to Western Europe will start to grow significantly."
Once Chinese car manufacturers meet Western European standards, said Cooiman, the next challenge would be to develop effective distribution structures. The first step in that process would involve the transport of vehicles from China to Europe. The options there were ro-ro ships, deep-sea container movement or overland by rail.
Ro-ro was generally considered to be the most economic mode of transport, said Cooiman, with the largest vessels able to accommodate about 8,000 units. However, trade imbalances meant there were often ro-ro capacity shortages west-bound between Asia and Europe.
One result of such problems was the occasional use of ocean containers to move vehicles. Such operations, though, tended to involve smaller quantities of vehicles being shipped to destinations not served by ro-ro vessels.
"For shipments to Western Europe (out of Asia), the volumes are normally too large. Also the price of using containers is too high due to the overall trade imbalance between Asia and Europe," said Cooiman.
A third option, he pointed out, was rail transport. To date, that alternative had not really come into the picture for car movements between Asia and Western Europe because the main volumes originated in Japan and Korea, which meant there would have to be an initial movement by sea.
"From China, though, 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," said Cooiman.
He said there were four potential routes which could be used in that context: The TSR (TransSiberian Railway) from Vostochny, although that would still require an initial short-sea connection from Shanghai or Tianjin; the TSR via Manzhouli in northern China; the TSR via Mongolia; the Silk Route via Alashankou and Kazakhstan.
In the light of those possibilities, Koopman has established a joint venture with European, CIS and Asian rail freight service provider InterRail (part of Swiss international transport and logistics group TransInvest) to set up a rail connection between China and Europe for the automotive industry. |
RELATED