A new train service from Hamburg to Zhengzhou is about 20 days faster than sea freight.
Claimed to be the first ever, the freight train service runs from Hamburg to the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou. The train, with a capacity of 41 containers, transports, among other things, industrial robots for an international technology firm.
The train to Zhengzhou takes around 17 days for the 10,214 km distance through Poland, Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan to China, and it is therefore about 20 days faster than sea freight.
The service is available as a shared-user service, so other freight forwarders are encouraged to sell space on the train.