Hisense train was sent off at the Trieste port by Li Bin, Envoy for Economy and Trade at the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Italy, Massimiliano Fedriga, President of Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, Hanson Han, President of Hisense Europe, Executive Vice President of Cosco Shipping Ji Lin and guests. The following morning we welcomed the train together with representatives of Cosco Shipping in the Hisense Europe industrial park in Velenje.
"This new line is very important for improving the transport system for our factories in Velenje and for ensuring a stable supply chain," said Hisense Europe President Hanson Han. “As a global brand that is deeply rooted in the European market, Hisense has always set its main goal on providing high quality products and services to European customers. Localized R&D in Europe, localized production and sales have always been our long-term strategy to support this goal. ”After Hisense acquired the Gorenje brand and its European factories in 2018, Hisense products and services are deeply integrated with Gorenje products and services, which is lead to a further enhanced localization strategy. "We now transport products made here in Europe not only to European markets, but also to markets in Asia, America and other parts of the world, with the help of the Cosco Shipping network, thus meeting market demand and realizing our vision of development.«
With regular operation, which is scheduled for September, they will be able to bring two Hisense trains a week to Velenje with a total of a maximum of 64 containers. The port of Trieste was chosen as the starting point by the carrier, while more than 80% of the cargo for our factories still passes through the port of Koper, where Hisense cargo represents 2% of the annual traffic of the entire port.
Hisense container trains are up to 500 meters long, and such large train compositions in Velenje run into a bottleneck, so they must be disassembled into two or three parts before they can be brought to the Gorenje industrial park. Here, they are unloaded from the train to the container terminal by a special lift, and empty containers are loaded onto the train. The composition travels from Trieste to Velenje for about 12 hours. Due to the increase in the volume of production, the existing container terminal within the Gorenje protected area has already become too small, so we will build another one in the immediate vicinity so that their total capacity will be up to 250 containers.
Hisense manufactures its products from the segments of household appliances, consumer electronics, communications, information technology and others in 29 industrial parks in Asia, Europe, Africa and South America, and exports to more than 160 countries and regions around the world.China Cosco Shipping Group is one of the largest shipping companies in the world, with a fleet of more than 1,400 vessels and a total capacity of more than 112 million dead weight tons. Of this, the container fleet comprises 507 ships with a capacity of 3.04 million containers.
In recent years, they have relied on the port of Piraeus and surrounding European ports, as well as its own Diamond Line brand, based on delivery advantages and the volume of ocean-rail intermodal transport. The special Trieste-Velenje freight railway line is part of the land-sea express line between China and Europe, which combines ocean shipping and land transport and stretches from the Greek port city of Piraeus to the hinterland of Europe.
The Hisense Group and Cosco Shipping have a long history of cooperation in the supply chain and cooperate in a similar way in China. Following the acquisition of Gorenje in 2018 and the expansion of production capacity, the logistics needs of the Hisense Europe Group are also increasing, and the impact of the covid-19 pandemic has brought new challenges to the security and stability of supply chains of international companies. Cosco Shipping actively responded to Hisense's needs and, by launching a block train, provided the Piraeus-Trieste-Velenje logistics channel for the supply of raw materials and components. In the future, Hisense train will also transport finished products from Velenje to Trieste, from where they will be shipped by Cosco to Spain, UK, USA, Australia and other destinations. Container ocean-rail intermodal transport is also less dependent on human resources, has a large volume of transport and is greener with a lower carbon footprint.