"The new silk route is at the expense of freight transport via Schiphol"

The transport of goods by train on the new Silk Road between China and Europe becomes a competitor of Schiphol. The consequences for the port of Rotterdam are limited. With the growth of Nieuwe Zijderoute, the position of the Netherlands will change: the less the gateway to Europe, the more the country at the end of the supply chain.

Researchers at the ING Bank Economic Bureau report this prediction in a report indicating that Thursday will be published

Rail is the new option for heavy cargo traffic between China and Europe and will grow strongly in the coming years. China is investing billions of dollars in the Belts and Roads Initiative, well-connected connections via land (the belt) and the sea (the road) between Europe and China. Since 2013, it is a priority of President Xi Jinping. There is no single lateral access road: the railway has three main tracks, with the hub of the desert city of Khorgos on the border between Kazakhstan and China.

l & # 39; air. Firms importing or exporting pay attention to three aspects of their transport: price, speed and, to a lesser extent, CO ₂ . For destinations in China's interior, such as Chengdu, air transportation costs four to six times more than rail. In shipping, the time, costs and pollution before and after transport also weigh on the road. The distance Chengdu-Shanghai is 2,000 kilometers, five days by truck

The ship remains the least expensive

Sea freight remains the cheapest option because of the economies of scale achieved by the major carriers. containers. Ships can carry 20,000 containers, 84 containers per train and up to 16 containers in a cargo plane. For cheap consumer products and bulk products such as petroleum products, ores and biomass, ships remain ideal. The consequences for the port of Rotterdam are limited.

Goods suitable for rail transport are electrical appliances and clothing in Europe and electrical machinery and parts in China.

Schiphol should lose some goods on the runway. A fifth of the cargo at Schiphol comes from China. In 2017, Schiphol was the third largest freight airport in Europe, with a volume of 1.75 million tonnes. Stopping growth for Schiphol, at least until 2021, is detrimental to the airport. Some airlines, together representing about twenty cargo flights a week, moved to Liege, Brussels and Frankfurt end of 2017. In the FD KLM CEO Peter Elbers warned this week not to let Chinese growth go by the drag on growth. "Airfreight plays an important role in the Dutch economy and we are convinced that this will continue to be the case.The demand for fast transport is only increasing, for example because of the growth of electronic commerce coming from from China. "