OREANDA-NEWS. On 6 February in Berlin, JSC TransContainer held a presentation of its representative office in Germany. The ceremony was attended by TransContainer's General Director Peter Baskakov, Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of the Russian Federation in Germany Vladimir Kotenev, Head of JSC RZD's Department of International Relations Alexei Averin, Head of Deutsche Bahn AG's Department of International Relations Ludwig Belkov, Secretary General of the Coordinating Council for Trans-Siberian Transportation Gennady Bessonov, and Director of JSC TransContainer's Representative Office in Germany Pavel Shanaitsa.

TransContainer opened its representative office in Germany on 14 June 2007. According to Peter Baskakov, its main task is to conduct systematic marketing to attract more freight to the international rail routes across Russia and Germany and to facilitate the opening of new container routes. "During the eight months of its existence, this representative office has organized effective schemes of operation and has made major strides in all its spheres of activity," said Peter Baskakov at the presentation.

In the words of Pavel Shanaitsa, in the short time since its inception, this representative office has managed to establish business contacts with local freight owners and large European rail operators, leading to the signing of a number of contracts for long-term cooperation with JSC TransContainer. "It is important to emphasize that we have already created the basis for providing our customers with transportation and logistics services in the European Union, Russia, and the CIS using our own fleet of containers permanently located in the freight-generating centres of Germany," Pavel Shanaitsa said.

Peter Baskakov reminded the audience of two major projects undertaken by the company in January 2008.

On 24 January, the first international container train from Beijing to Hamburg completed its demonstration run. On 9 January it left Beijing's Dahongmen Station and on 24 January it delivered 98 TEU of various goods to Hamburg. The total transit time was 15 days, with a route length of 9954 km. The forwarder across the territories of Mongolia, Russia, and Belarus was TransContainer, which also provided its own flat wagons for transporting the containers on 1520 mm gauge. This project also involved JSC RZD (Russian Railways), railway administrations of China, Mongolia, Belarus, and Poland, and Russian customs authorities.

"We are confident that this run will help attract the attention of Chinese consignors to the Trans-Siberian Railway as an alternative to ocean trade routes from Asia-Pacific countries to Europe," stressed Peter Baskakov.

In addition, the first container train with Volkswagen car components went from Brest to a plant in Kaluga on 20 January this year. It is expected that in 2008 TransContainer will move about 44,000 TEU of freight to the Kaluga plant.

According to Peter Baskakov, the total volume of freight transported in containers by rail from Russia to Germany was about 70,000 TEU in 2007, with the volume of transit growing about threefold, from 3,400 to 10,400 TEU.