Alternative transport route opened: Rostock-Kaliningrad

DB Cargo Eurasia GmbH took delivery of the first large shipment of masks and protective equipment at the Port of Rostock on 04 May 2020 in a successful joint effort with DB Schenker and DB Procurement. A total of four containers with 7.4 million protective masks for Deutsche Bahn and six further containers with urgently needed protective equipment for Italy were transported via the new Kaliningrad-Rostock sea route under the project name "Railway Bridge Eurasia".

This alternative route to Malaszewicze/Brest has been operated by DB Cargo Eurasia on a weekly basis since April 2020. In addition to DB Schenker, DB Procurement and DB Cargo Russia, the transport will be realised with partners such as XIAN ITL, UTLC, Mannlines and Rostock Hafen, among others.

The first pandemic transport started from the terminal in Xi'an, China, on 22 April 2020 by train via Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus and Lithuania to Kaliningrad. From Kaliningrad, the containers travel by ship to Rostock, where they are unloaded and transferred to rail. The entire transport takes an average of 12 days and covers distances of over 10,000km.

From Rostock the goods are transported by train to Duisburg or Verona or by container ship to Scandinavia. The complete door-to-door delivery, including packaging, customs clearance and documentation, is carried out by truck from the respective terminals to the destination.

In the coming weeks, on the initiative of the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, 50 million masks, among others, are to arrive in Germany by rail.

For our customers, this means an uncomplicated service from a single source and represents an attractive alternative to the otherwise continuous rail transport between China and Europe via the Belarusian-Polish border Brest-Malaszewicze, where there are currently capacity bottlenecks due to construction work.