Russian Railways plans to increase the number of container trains to China via Zabaikalsk to 10 per day

The Russian Railways Holding Company (RZD) plans to agree with Chinese partners to increase the number of container trains through Zabaikalsk to 10 trains per day by 2023.

This was reported to journalists by the deputy head of Russian Railways Alexey Shilo.
"We have agreed that we will work on eight, we are transferring six (container trains) - approx. TASS). But we want for 2023 to have 10 container trains in terms of cargo transfer through Zabaikalsk," he said.
Shilo stressed that there is a great demand for the transfer of container trains. At the moment, it is possible to transfer only 240 container trains per month, while the number of applications for the Zabaikalsk border crossing exceeds 1.6 thousand trains per month.
In addition, according to the deputy head of the holding, Russian Railways have reserves for transportation at the Kamyshovaya and Nizhneleninskoye - Tongjiang border crossings. "We can additionally send an average of four trains per day to these two checkpoints. Approximately 20 thousand tons is the volume per day that we can transfer additionally," Shilo explained.
Due to the fact that China is gradually removing covid restrictions, in January 2023, rail transportation between China and the Russian Federation increased by 68% compared to last year, by November- December 2022, the growth was 10% year-on-year. On average, 63 thousand tons of cargo are currently being transferred per day, compared to 37 thousand tons in 2022.
"That is, we believe that the figures we have reached now will definitely allow us to show a positive result in the next few months compared to the previous year," concluded the deputy head of Russian Railways, writes TASS.