During its visit to Kazakhstan organised by the Austrian Economic Chamber, the Rail Cargo Group signs a Memorandum of Understanding with the Kazakh railway subsidiary KTZ Express. In addition, RCG is intensifying its cooperation with TITR – Trans-Caspian International Transport Route.
Starting from China via Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine and Slovakia from and to the European hubs, a sustainable rail link will be implemented. This is impressive in terms of qualitative transport services, but also by a shortened transport route and time savings for customers. KTZ Express organises the operator services from the Chinese-Kazakh border in Khorgos / Altynkol to the Ukrainian-Slovak border Chop / Dobra. From Dobra, the RCG takes over and handles the traffic from and to the European destinations.
In addition, the freight transport division of the ÖBB and the Kazakh rail subsidiary are jointly developing a strong service on the southern Silk Road, thus offering a completely new rail connection to Asia – far away from those routes on which numerous rail logistics companies are already romping. Due to increasing volumes, for example across the Belarusian-Polish border Malaszewicze / Brest, the maximum utilisation has been reached. This leads to bottlenecks again and again.
For this reason, implementing additional routes is absolutely necessary. For example, RCG has already successfully implemented regular services via Ukraine and Slovakia and offers two weekly connections from China to Budapest and once a week from China to Duisburg. These rotations will now be switched to the route via Khorgos.
The route from China via Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and to Central Europe is a viable alternative and has enormous potential. Not only containers are being transported, but trailer traffic is also in high demand. The goal is to offer them on this route in the future.
