The first freight train from Yiwu to London opened. Good News for UK Buyers

There’s a good news for UK buyers who import goods from China, that recently China has launched a direct cargo train service from Yiwu to London, as a part project of its One-Belt-One-Road scheme. It’s of great significance in driving mutual trade and investment, and it means a lot more for those individuals who do business with China. Especially in terms of the shipping, transporting goods by the Yiwu-London line is not only half as cheap as air transport, but it also occupies half the time as sea shipping does.

On Jan., 1st, the train departed in Yiwu West Station, carrying 34 standard containers of small commodities most of which were directly purchased from local Yiwu market such as home appliance, decorations and bags etc, and directly heading to London’s Barking Station.

After departing Yiwu Station, the train started to run straight northward, crossing the Alashankou border and then traversed Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, Belgium and France, until finally pulling into the Barking station at 1:00 pm on Jan., 18th on schedule.

As we all have known, Yiwu is the world’s largest small commodities wholesale market. In recent years, we have seen a huge surge in sales to England. In the last 11 months, Yiwu exported goods of about 578 million dollars to England, which increased by 16.7% on the same time basis. England has become Yiwu’s largest export destination in Europe right now. President Xi had brought up the idea to build the Yiwu-London rail service. Now the time comes. With one year’s strive; we finally get to see the running of Yiwu-London cargo train.

Following the successful operation of Yiwu-Spain, Yiwu-Tehran and Yiwu-Pakistan, the opening of Yiwu-London makes the China-Europe Silk Road Initiative more consolidated and powerful. Until now, London has become the 15th European city which joined the New Silk Road project. And the list goes on.

Statistics showed that as of Jan., 11st, 2017, Yixinou China-Europe rail freight train has completed 139 round trips, and successfully delivered 10,566 standard containers of cargoes between Yiwu to Europe countries. In terms of the one-way trip, it totally generated 118 times and tugged 9,966 containers of small commodities, including:

Rajesh Agrawal, London’s deputy mayor in charge of business conferred the most significance for the train. He said “It means London has become one of China’s most prominent trade destinations. London will offer a huge market for Chinese companies, as well as professional service and capital channels”. London station is not the end; instead, it is the start for China to tap into the Western market.