International Maritime
Westbound rail traffic from China to Europe plummeted 27.4 % in H1 2025. Shutterstock. com
Maksim Safaniuk / Shutterstock. com alternatives, but [ border closures ] remain difficult,” Helge Neumann-Lezius, global head of full container load at Hellmann, told the Journal of Commerce.
One of the alternatives was railing containers to St. Petersburg and using ocean to Hamburg, but according to forwarder Dimerco, all available space on that option was booked within two days of the Małaszewicze border point being shut, which demonstrated strong market demand for China-Europe rail.
“ The full potential of the northern corridor will only be realized once the Ukraine conflict is fully resolved.”
“ This indicates that as long as alternative routes offer advantages over air and sea freight options, the China – Europe freight trains will continue to attract long-term attention,” Dimerco noted in a customer advisory following the Poland-Belarus border closure.
But Dimerco also acknowledged that the incident would hurt market confidence in the short term, noting that the capacity availability and stability of alternative routes would become key variables.
Customs compounding delays
Not all disruptions can be resolved in weeks, or even months. In November last year, possibly in response to tightening sanctions, Russia decided to make physical checks on all cargo crossing its borders, bringing Europebound trains on the northern corridor to a standstill at the Kazakhstan-Russia checkpoint.
Smrkovsky said large numbers of containers were sent back to China and had to be shipped by ocean, turning a 30-day transit into a three-month journey.
He said many international shippers switched part of their volumes to the middle corridor through Kazakhstan and across the Caspian Sea to bypass Russian territory. But the sudden rise in volume quickly overwhelmed the multimodal route and, combined with extreme weather, resulted in unprecedented delays.
“ Last winter, the port of Aktau [ on Kazakhstan’ s Caspian Sea ] was closed sometimes for a week, sometimes even longer on short notice and the throughput was severely reduced. I’ ve been dealing with China-Europe rail transportation for 15 years and these were the most serious delays I have ever seen,” Smrkovsky said.
“ It was impossible to solve the situation for shippers and forwarders. There were containers in transit for over 100 days between China and Bulgaria. Containers were stuck in Aktau port in a rail yard and when they finally were able to move and the cargo reached Baku on the Azerbaijan side of the Caspian, the railways were unable to handle the volume, leading to another three weeks delay,” he said, adding that hundreds of production companies in Europe were affected.
Investment into the middle corridor is trying to address some of the infrastructure concerns and the lack of capacity of rail ferries on the Caspian Sea, but Smrkovsky is not convinced.
“ Let’ s see what the performance will be on the middle corridor during the upcoming winter,” he said.
Thomas Kowitzki, global head of China rail at DHL Global Forwarding, Freight, said the China – Europe rail route remains attractive for shippers requiring faster transit times than ocean freight or searching for a cheaper alternative to air freight.
While Kowitzki said the northern rail route was running smoothly after the reopening of the Poland-Belarus border in late September, the middle corridor was problematic with a range of factors making the rail route unattractive for China – Europe traffic.
“ The trans-Caspian routing... does not yet provide the competitive advantage, as lead times are unstable and long due to extreme weather situations, lack of sufficient infrastructure at handling ports and capacity to cross the Caspian Sea,” he said, adding that the route is a better solution for China – Central Asia cargo than as a transport option between China and Europe.
email: greg. knowler @ spglobal. com
18 Journal of Commerce | November 3, 2025 www. joc. com