News

The first and unique in its kind container train ‘Saule’, linking Western Europe with China via Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus and Lithuania, departed from China on 28 October and is to arrive in Lithuania on 10 November.

As Asia’s economies are growing fast and the volume of trade and goods exported to Europe is increasing, the container train ‘Saule’ plays a very important role in linking Europe and Asia with an overland connection via Lithuania.

The container train ‘Saule’ project has a support at the highest level of Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė and President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev.

“Today, Lithuania once again controls the strategic crossroads between East and West, and such transport projects as ‘Saule’ have an immense transit potential,” says Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Audronius Ažubalis.

A decision was taken to call this new railway project ‘Saule’, as the word is common to both languages and pronounced the same way both in Lithuanian and in the Kazakh language. It means ‘The Sun” in Lithuanian and ‘Ray of Light’ in the Kazakh language.

On 28 October, the 41-container train left from the railway station of the city of Chongqing in China. It reached the ‘Dostyk’ station located at the border of Kazakhstan and China passing through the territory of Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus. On 10 November, the train will arrive in Lithuania. At Mockava station, the containers will be re-loaded onto the trans-European railway platform and the cargo will be shipped from Lithuania via Poland and Germany to the Port of Antwerp in Belgium.

The new rail link to Europe will significantly reduce the time of shipment of goods. Sea shipment from Europe to China lasts 40 days, while the container train ‘Saule’ from China arrives in Lithuania in 10 days. The land route to Europe is not only shorter, but also safer and cheaper, as compared to sea freight shipping.

Lithuania, as a transit country, is the initiator of many ambitious cross-border transport projects. Lithuania’s Klaipėda State Seaport is the northernmost ice–free port in the Baltic region, the country can also benefit from its convenient geographic location and from two different railway gauges that intersect here: the general (‘Russian’) and standard (‘European’).  Perspective transport corridors in the East-West and North-South directions are actively developed in the country, as well as such projects as the container train ‘Viking’ and the European railway link Rail Baltica.

“By using diplomatic means to prompt the implementation of these projects, we ensure better transport connection between the European Union and the Baltic countries, we are working to fulfil Lithuania’s vision of becoming a logistics centre for organizing the flow of goods from East to West, and to live up to the expectations with regard to more effective trade relationships with Central Asia,” says A.Ažubalis.