Europe's main Silk Road hub in Poland had been struggling, but now the number of containers arriving from Asia is on the rise. CGTN’s Johannes Pleschberger visited a Polish logistics company which operates on the Northern Silk Road – using trains rather than ships.
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00:00Europe's main silk road hub in eastern Poland has been struggling.
00:06But now, despite Western criticism over transporting goods via Russia,
00:12the Polish trade sector seems to be recovering.
00:15We are using only the way through Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus.
00:20And even in that difficult situation right now, geopolitical one,
00:25we are still using that solution and the solution is quite stable.
00:32The Warsaw-based logistics company Simlok did try to bypass Russia
00:36by using the Middle Silk Road via the Caspian Sea.
00:39It turned out to be less attractive than the Northern Corridor economically and time-wise.
00:45For Polish logistics companies, the Northern Silk Road is a success story.
00:50Trains are faster and cheaper than ships using the longer sea routes.
00:55After peaking in 2021, the number of containers coming from China to Poland
01:00has dropped by more than a third due to geopolitical conflicts and the global economic slowdown.
01:06More recently, Simlok has seen a steep rise in freight volume on the Northern Corridor.
01:12We had a pandemic, we had a war started on Ukraine and as well we have Red Sea crisis.
01:21So all of that factors made uncertainty on the market.
01:25So at the moment we feel that the situation is stabilized, so the volume is recovering.
01:31Simlok is expecting the freight volume to rebound by the end of this year
01:35before a potential new record high in 2025.
01:40Poland is situated in a strategic and central location on the rail route linking Europe with China.
01:47I can say that due to this location, Poland for many years, and especially formally since 2015,
01:53sees itself as part of the great idea of Belt and Road.
01:57Despite Poland's hopes for the Northern Silk Road through Russia,
02:01the European Union decided not to co-finance the expansion of the Malasiewicza freight hub
02:06at the Belarusian border.
02:08Instead, Brussels has been seeking to prioritize other routes through Ukraine,
02:12which for now remains suspended because of the conflict.
02:16The improved economic activity in Malasiewicza, however,
02:19seems a good reason for Polish companies to keep investing.
02:23Johannes Blechberger, CGTN, Warsaw.