In late December, the Metsä Fibre Division of the Finnish Metsä Group used the land route to China for the first time to export sawn timber. With the block train loaded with 41 containers in Kouvula/Finland, Metsä Fibre delivered 1800m3 of softwood sawn timber to the northwestern Chinese city of Xi’an, the capital of the Shaaxi province. Sources: Timberbiz, Euwid
The train ran from Finland through Russia and Kazakhstan to China. The train trip was handled by Kouvula Cargo Handling in cooperation with KTZExpress, a subsidiary of the Kazakh railway company as the train path operator and Unytrade as the agent of KTZExpress responsible for Scandinavia.
The three companies started regular train services between Finland and China in November 2017 with trains running twice a week.
One year earlier, Finnish company Versowood Oy had despatched the first block train with sawn softwood to China. The block train, which also comprised 41 containers, was sent to Nankang/Province Jiangxi.
