ASTANA (TCA) — A train consisting of wagons of KTZ Express, a subsidiary of Kazakhstan’s national railways company Kazakhstan Temir Zholy (KTZ), on November 10 departed from the Finnish station Kouvola for the Chinese Xian through Kazakhstan, the press office of KTZ said.
Representatives of the Embassy of Kazakhstan in Finland, administrations of Kouvola and Xi’an cities, and heads of transport and logistics companies took part in the ceremony of sending the train.
The train with products of the timber industry will cover a distance of more than 8.5 thousand km in 10 days. Over 3 thousand km of the route go through Kazakhstan with transshipment in the dry port of the Free Trade Zone “Khorgos – Eastern Gate” at the border station Altynkol on the border with China.
“We are ready to develop cooperation with Finland in the field of rail transportation. The organization and launching of a container train from Finland with transit through Kazakhstan to China and back is a landmark event for all participating countries,” said A. Karimov, Director of the Container Transportation Department of KTZ Express.
The successful implementation of the project was the result of the joint work of multimodal logistics companies — KTZ Express and Finland’s Couvola Innovation Oy. The projected potential volume of cargo on the route Kouvola – Buslovskaya – Altynkol – Xian is more than 1 million tons per year.
In December 2016 an Agreement was signed between Kazakhstan, Finland, Russia and China on the opening of the Eastern Transport Corridor.
