More than $1 billion of cargo has already been shipped through the new route, Li Yu and Peng Chao report from Chengdu.

Three years after China proposed the Belt and Road Initiative, Chengdu, which lies at the intersection of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, has set up a new target to build itself into a national central city.

A key step is to turn the city into a world-class transportation hub.

A cargo railway link between Lodz, Poland, and Chengdu, a mega city in western China, has worked as a modern Silk Road for the cooperation and exchanges between China and Europe.

Tomasz Grzelak, CEO and president of Hatrans Logistics, is planning to build a new 100,000-square-meter warehouse to accommodate cargo shipped to and from Chengdu.

Based in Lodz, Hatrans offers logistics services on the Chengdu-Lodz rail route for the Chengdu-Europe Express. Its 5,000-square-meter warehouse is running out of room as an increasing number of shipments are transported on the railway route.

Hatrans started cooperation with Chengdu to operate the express rail service three years ago.

"Chengdu is one of the earliest cities (in China) to launch the express rail service to Europe," said Grzelak. "Compared with other routes, the Chengdu route is more widely used for its regular freight train service."

In line with the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by President Xi Jinping in 2013, Chengdu launched an express rail service to Lodz in April that year. The route runs almost parallel to the legendary Silk Road, stretching 9,826 kilometers.

Grzelak said the trains ran from Chengdu to Lodz once a week at the very beginning. With an increase of customers, the frequency has increased to four times a week from Chengdu to Lodz and two times from Lodz to Chengdu.

The trains from Chengdu mainly carry cargo including electronic devices, car parts, heavy machinery and general merchandise, while the trains to Chengdu mainly ship food, drinks and furniture, according to Grzelak.

Since its opening, the express line has made 329 journeys and delivered 40,700 tons of shipments in 26,976 standard containers with more than $1 billion in freight value as of the end of July.

"It takes 50 days from Poland to Chengdu by sea, while the Chengdu-Europe express rail takes only 10.5 days," said Grzelak, adding that the cargo could be sent to any destination in Europe within three days from Lodz, a logistics hub at the heart of the continent.

Hatrans is preparing to build a 340,000-square-meter exhibition center in Lodz so that customers in Europe can directly purchase the goods from Chengdu shipped via the express rail. The center is expected to be completed in two or three years.

"We are trying to help more companies in Poland and other eastern European countries to export their products to China," said Jakub Garstka, management proxy for logistics at Hatrans.

Garstka said Hatrans has started cooperation with China's e-commerce giant JD.com to sell Polish food through the company's e-commerce platform. It also set up an exhibition hall in Chengdu two months ago to showcase high-quality Polish goods.

Han Baohua, general manager of GD Poland International in the suburban area of Warsaw, is looking forward to exporting farm products from Eastern Europe to China through the Chengdu-Europe Express rail.

GD Poland International operates the largest wholesale market for Chinese goods in the European Union, with its sales surpassing $2 billion last year.

"The companies in the market mainly import Chinese goods to Europe, but their combined sales last year dropped to almost half that of 2011 due to the influence of the European debt crisis.

The Chengdu-Europe express rail offers new business opportunities for our trade companies," Han said.

Han said the Chengdu-Europe express rail is a good choice to ship farm products because it costs much less than air transportation and takes much less time than transportation by sea.

"The only problem is that the Chinese government hasn't loosened the restrictions to import farm products from eastern European countries.

Once loosened, the express line will become a 'hot line'," he said.

Many companies in and around Chengdu, and even those in eastern coastal cities and provinces such as Shanghai, Fujian and Guangdong, also chose the express rail to transport their goods.

Since January, 99 percent of the components used for home appliance maker TCL's TV sets sold in Europe have been transported through the Chengdu-Europe express rail, according to Tomasz Olender, deputy general manager of TCL's plant in Poland.

With an annual production capacity of 2.2 million TV sets, the Poland plant is the company's major manufacturing base in Europe, as well as the biggest factory set up in Europe by a Chinese company.

Liang Tiemin, vice-president of TCL Multimedia, said a TCL plant in Chengdu is scheduled to expand its production to cater for another 800,000 TV sets installed in Poland by the end of next year.

The components made in Chengdu are shipped by train to the Poland plant, where they will be assembled into TV sets and sold to the European market.

"We will make Chengdu our major manufacturing base for TV sets sold in Europe," he said.

Liang said TCL will also export more air-conditioners, refrigerators and washing machines to Europe by making full use of the Chengdu-Europe express rail.

Contact the writers through pengchao@chinadaily.com.cn

The Chengdu-Europe Express is ready to depart from a railway station in Nuremberg, Germany.Wang Xiao / For China Daily

Tomasz Grzelak, CEO and president of Hatrans Logistics, talks about his company's close ties with Chengdu at a warehouse in Lodz, Poland.Wang Xiao / For China Daily

Workers assemble TV sets at a TCL plant in Poland. The majority of their components are shipped via the cargo rail service.Wang Xiao / For China Daily

(China Daily 09/26/2016 page7)