After the Suez Canal was blocked, the number of inquiries about China-Europe trains doubled

The Suez Canal was blocked for a whole week from the 23rd to the 29th . On the 29th, the Ever Given finally straightened its hull and resumed its normal route, but it still took about a week for all the cargo ships waiting to pass through the canal .

The blockage of the Suez Canal is only a low-probability black swan event, although it has happened more than once. The reason is that this "throat" of the shortest shipping line between Asia and Europe is really narrow! The total length is 190 kilometers, and the widest part of the river is only 345 meters. After the emergence of modern large container ships , the efficiency of the Suez Canal has decreased, and congestion may occur from time to time .

But just when everyone's attention was on when the canal would be open and cross-border traders were at a loss, the Russians took out their own Arctic route and took the opportunity to promote it. And some of our domestic international logistics service platforms have also doubled the number of inquiries about the China-Europe Express recently .

Moreover, the follow-up impact of the Suez Canal incident is still on shipping . If you continue to use sea transportation , you may face no ship schedule or price increase in April. Therefore, some domestic international logistics service platforms have recently received twice as many inquiries about China-Europe trains as before.

This short-term surge is due to the special situation of the Suez Canal, but the popularity of China-Europe railways is actually due to multiple factors such as the epidemic, shipping timeliness and container shortages . In fact, even if there is no black swan event this time, our China-Europe train market is still popular! Let's look at the data first:

In the first two months of this year , more than 2,000 freight trains departed from China to Europe, twice as many as in the same period last year (when the epidemic first broke out). According to official data from our country , the total number of China-Europe freight trains in 2020 increased by 50% year-on-year, and increased sixfold compared to 2016.

Some domestic cross-border traders said that export orders are usually shipped by sea. However, since the middle of last year, the price of sea freight has "soared" and the transportation time has doubled, so rail has become a good choice . After all, the transportation cost of China-Europe trains is 50% higher than that of sea freight, but it is still much lower than that of air freight , and some electronic consumer products are not suitable for air freight .

According to Eurostat, China replaced the United States as the EU's largest trading partner in goods in 2020, with total Chinese exports to the EU rising 6% to 384 billion euros ($454 billion) . With such a large trade volume, it is unwise to put all your eggs in one basket.

Maritime transport still occupies the central position in cross-border trade , and railways still play a supporting role. Domestic media said that the Suez Canal incident is good for China-Europe Express, but the railway capacity is still insufficient compared to maritime transport. However, as more and more cities in China open routes to Europe, I believe that railways will become a reliable logistics option for Asia-Europe trade in the future.

China-Europe Express

Suez Canal