A train filled with chemical materials left the Port of Antwerp in Belgium at 8 p.m. on May 9 and headed for remote Chongqing, a major city in western China. This marks the official launch of a freight rail connecting Antwerp and Chongqing and a new stage of development for the Eurasian Land Bridge.

Antwerp is not only the second largest port in Europe, with a cargo throughput that reached 178 million tons in 2010, but also Europe's second largest rail hub, conducting 250 freight trains per day. Antwerp has become one of Europe's most important logistics centers thanks to its advanced multimodal transportation services.

Liao Qingxuan, deputy secretary-general of the Chongqing municipal government, said during his current visit to Antwerp that the freight rail link between Antwerp and Chongqing is significant in promoting China's western development and changing the structure of China's logistics sector.

The freight rail journey from Antwerp to Chongqing currently requires 20 to 25 days, it but can be shortened to only 15 to 20 days in the future. This is compared with the 36-day journey required by maritime transport between China's eastern ports and Europe's western ports. The faster rail transportation will provide China's southwestern interior regions and even some countries in Southeast Asia with an additional option for trade with Europe.

As the largest transportation hub in western China, Chongqing put a freight rail terminal with an annual cargo management capacity of about 2 million TEU containers into operation in 2009. The city opened freight services for the southern section of the Eurasian Land Bridge in 2010. The Eurasian Land Bridge passes Xinjiang's Alataw Pass and Kazakhstan, ends in Russia's Moscow, and the freight rail was extended to Germany's Duisburg via Poland in March 2011 before further expanding to Antwerp in May.

Belgium has also put great emphasis on the opening of the freight rail linking Antwerp and Chongqing. The POM Antwerp (Development Authority of the Province of Antwerp), the Antwerp Port Authority and the Belgian Administration of Customs & Excise jointly participated in the preparations for the launch of the freight rail link in 2010 and entrusted Swiss-based land inter-modal operator Hupac, along with its partner Russian-based Russkaya Troyka and Eurasia Good Transport, to offer related freight transportation services. This has ensured the sufficiency of return cargo, smooth customs clearance and one freight train journey a day.

The president of an Antwerp transportation and logistics union said that he is optimistic about the outlook of the freight rail linking Antwerp and Chongqing. He asserted that a 10 to 15-day cut in the transportation duration is significant to enterprises that produce high-value-added products and rail transportation is safer than maritime transportation. He added that there are no problems for the availability of sufficient goods for the rail transportation from Antwerp to Chongqing.

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