The company started its regular service in 2014, consolidating cargo in Zhengzhou and using the daily service that operates from that railhead to and from Malaszewicze in Poland, Hamburg in Germany, and Liège in Belgium.

A spike in LCL traffic as a greater number of shippers switch from air and ocean to the overland mode has led U-Freight to establish a consolidation centre at its logistics hub in Shanghai.

Simon Wong, chief executive officer of the U-Freight Group comments: “As an early adopter of this routing option, we have developed a strong position in the market.

“We now handle significant consol shipments from China to Germany, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland and The Netherlands in particular, as well as smaller volumes to other European countries, handled by our network of long standing agents once the shipments arrive at the three rail freight hubs on the European mainland.

“We chose the service from Zhengzhou as it is the only one that offers a daily frequency, although for FCL shipments our large Chinese presence enables us to arrange container pickup from across the country and select a service from the rail freight gateway that is nearest to our customers.

“While other transport modes still face significant capacity and schedule issues, our overland rail freight service is clearly demonstrating that it offers a competitive alternative to air freight in regards to price, and considerably faster transit times compared to the ocean freight alternative.”

Typical transit times from Zhengzhou to Malaszewicze are between 12 to 14 days, and 16-18 days to Hamburg.

UK-based forwarder Davies Turner has also noted a spike in LCL bookings on its weekly fixed-day rail consol service from China to the UK, and is adding destinations that will be served directly from China.

Tony Cole, head of supply chain services, said: “Having reviewed the pattern of shipments we are carrying, we have decided to offer a direct service to our regional freight hubs in Birmingham, Bristol and Manchester, in addition to the existing direct service to Dartford.

“Since the direct service recommenced in March, we have seen three to four 40ft high cube containers arriving every week direct into our Dartford freight hub.

“However, following the review, we have identified many of the shipments are for distribution to other parts of the UK, so we are now working with our partners in China to refine the consolidation process at Hefei, and to ensure that shipments destined for the South West, Midlands or North West are consolidated in the same container.

“This additional fine tuning of the service will enable us to make a further reduction in the transit time.”

As previously discussed, the weekly service leaves the Hefei rail hub and heads to Neuss in Germany, from where containers are trucked under bond to the port of Rotterdam and transported by ferry to Purfleet.

In future, on-carriage will be undertaken from Purfleet by truck direct to one of Davies Turner’s DCs in Birmingham, Bristol, Dartford or Manchester, where the contents will be discharged, customs cleared and delivered.