[Courtesy of Hyundai Glovis ]
SEOUL -- Hyundai Glovis, the logistics wing of South Korea's Hyundai auto group, strengthened its partnership with China's Changjiu Group and agreed to launch a joint railway transportation brand. Glovis would use its automotive logistics know-how and Changjiu's network to conduct aggressive sales to automakers in Europe and China.
Glovis said in a statement on March 3 that it would sell a 30 percent stake in its European subsidiary, Adampol, to Changjiu Group, which is involved in the transportation of finished and used vehicles. In 2019, Glovis and Changjiu agreed to expand cooperation in logistics and expand their railway logistics business linking China and Europe.
Glovis has worked hard to attract cargo aboard ships returning to the Far East. In 2020, the company secured a long-term contract to ship finished cars produced by Volkswagen from Europe to China. In a test joint operation, Glovis and its Chinese partner have jointly transported finished cars by rail from Germany to Chengdu in China.
Glovis said that the railway transportation brand named Euro China Train (ECT) would combine Changjiu's transportation volume from China to Europe with Glovis' European railway transshipment infrastructure at a time when railways emerge as an alternative to logistics transportation to Europe due to a sharp rise in global shipping fares.
Adampol, acquired by Glovis in 2014, operates a train terminal with a railway cargo transshipment system in Malaszewicze that can be linked with Changjiu's trans-China rail transportation (TCR), a railway line that connects various parts of China through CIS countries to Europe. Rail tracks used by China and Europe are different from those used by CIS countries. Therefore, the TCR line must transfer cargo at the border between China and Kazakhstan and once more as it enters Europe.
Glovis and Changjiu will expand their transportation areas from inland cities in China through Poland to Western Europe and open a railway logistics route that directly connects Malaszewicze with Gdansk, a port city on the Baltic coast of Poland. Glovis said that ECT can directly transport cargo from Poland to the Scandinavian Peninsula and Britain via the Baltic Sea and reduce the transit time compared to TCR routes that travel by rail to Northern Europe.
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