On 10 May, the first China Railway Express from Linhe to Teheran departed from Linhe station of Bayinnaoer city on Hetao Plateau of Inner Mongolia. Fully loaded with 1,150t of premium sunflower seeds, the 50-car formation trains entered Xinjiang province through the Linhe-Kumul line, left the border from Khorgos and arrived at Teheran, the capital of Iran through Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

Thanks to China’s deepening business cooperation with Europe and BRI counties, China Railway Hohhot Group Co., Ltd endeavours to further smooth out the freight traffic at Erlian international port, at the same time works to identify new trade resources within its jurisdiction to upgrade and enrich the operation scheme of China Railway Express. The train – jointly developed by the Bayinnaoer local government, Hohhot Group, the Hohhot subsidiary of China Railway Container Transport Corp. Ltd., and the Inner Mongolia Foreign Trade Development Limited Company – registers 15 days in the operation period and 8,352km in running kilometres, cutting the time of sea transport by around 25 days.

Located on teh Hetao plateau, the city of Bayinnaroer is well endowed with favourable natural conditions, as well as extensive agricultural and pastoral resources. As an important production area of sunflower seed, the city records a 180,000t seeds export annually, with 90% of the output going to Middle East, Europe and America.

The operation of the Express train helps promote the sales of premium agricultural and pastoral products of Inner Mongolia and the Western areas to the international market, poold together the related industries and cleard the path for equipment manufacturers of Inner Mongolia to access international trade.

(Source: CR)