After the successful test transports that we carried out in June this year, in mid-October together with the carrier Cosco, we established a regular Trieste-Velenje railway line, along which a special Hisense container train delivers raw materials and components for our production, which arrive in the port of Trieste on Cosco ships. We are already building a new container terminal in the Velenje industrial park, which is a condition for increasing the capacity of container transport as planned in the future.
Strategic partners Cosco and Hisense will strive to build on this form of cooperation in logistics to create a win-win situation for mutual benefit and in the future increase the capacity of the block train to Velenje. It has been running regularly since mid-October, once a week, bringing 32 containers of raw materials and components from the port of Trieste directly to our Velenje industrial park each time.
For the expansion of this cooperation we are already building a larger container terminal within the industrial location of Hisense Europe in Velenje, which is expected to be completed this year and covers 6,000 square meters and will be able to accommodate up to 250 containers, and 350 containers together with the existing terminal.
Hisense block trains are up to 500 meters long and must be disassembled into several parts in Velenje before arriving at their destination at the factory's container terminal. After unloading of full containers to our terminal, empty containers are loaded onto the train and returned to the port. In the future, the Hisense train from Velenje to Trieste will also transport finished products, which will then be shipped around the world on Cosco ships. The train from Trieste to Velenje takes about 12 hours, while container ocean-rail intermodal transport is less dependent on human resources, has a high volume of traffic and is greener and low-carbon.
The regular container railway line Trieste - Velenje means a great improvement of the transport system for our factories in Velenje and for ensuring a stable supply chain, thereby supporting our main goal: providing high quality products and services to European customers. We are supporting this goal on several levels, e. g. by having a Europe located R&D, localized production and sales. In addition to many European markets, we also transport products manufactured in Europe to markets in Asia, America and other areas around the world. The network of the Cosco Shipping carrier is of great support in this, so that despite the current uncertain and changing conditions in logistics, which have a strong impact on supply chains, we can successfully fulfill the demand of the markets, our end customers and our own development strategy for growth.
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 tons. Of this, the container fleet comprises 507 ships with a capacity of 3.04 million containers.