OREANDA-NEWS.  DHL Global Forwarding has added Taiwan into its pioneering and fast expanding North Asia multimodal network. The sea link between Taiwan and mainland China offers customers the full-container load door-to-door service, DHL Railline, and will connect the leading Taichung port to Shanghai with a rail link to Warsaw via Suzhou, which also serves as a base for over 10,000 Taiwan-funded export-oriented enterprises. DHL now offers three multimodal rail services between mainland China and Europe.

The sea link that added Japan and now Taiwan into the network means that customers all over North Asia now have an alternative to sea and airfreight - as do their trading partners across Europe - and access to benefits such as reduced transit times, costs and CO2 emissions.

Similar to the Japan service originating from Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe and Hakata launched last year, the new multimodal Taiwan-China-Europe service will offer freight costs savings of up to 85% and CO2 emissions by up to 90% compared to air freight with shorter transit times than ocean freight. The seamless scheduled service will use a combination of trucking, sea and rail solutions to move cargo from Taiwan into DHL Global Forwarding China's rail freight solution which reduces the delivery time by between 10 and 21 days, depending on origin and destination pairs, compared to solely using ocean freight.

Using the DHL Railline service, customers can block out single containers, wagon groups or whole block trains. A true door-to-door service, DHL's multimodal solution for Taiwan uses any and all combinations of rail, ship and road to connect the market's businesses to Europe with the reassurance of high security and last mile delivery by truck or rail. From Europe, the multimodal service is also available via rail through mainland China and sea to Taiwan for import shipments.  Customers now have more choices and more flexibility whether their cargo are being shipped from Taiwan, Japan, mainland China or Europe.

Charles Kaufmann, CEO, North Asia and Head, Value Added Services, DHL Global Forwarding Asia Pacific said: "Imports and exports form the main source of Taiwan's economic growth momentum. Taiwan's foreign trade amounted to US$588 billion (EUR533 billion) in 2014 with exports and trade surplus hitting a new high. With a foreign trade dependence rate of 111% and 20th ranking in the leading exporters and importers in world merchandise trade, it is important that Taiwan remains closely integrated into the global trade network to maintain competitiveness."

Steve Huang, CEO, DHL Global Forwarding China said: "Our new service extension comes at a time when China's 'One Belt, One Road' initiative - an economic initiative of up to US$21 trillion (EUR19 trillion) - is taking shape and expected to strengthen cross-border economic ties in markets between Europe and Asia. Our multimodal network directly links Taiwan to mainland China and Europe, both of which are among Taiwan's top five trading nations, bringing more opportunities to Taiwan enterprises. In addition, the European Commission recently announced that it is exploring negotiations on investment with Taiwan as part of a trade globalization plan, showing the island's growing importance in the global marketplace."

Kenny Mok, Managing Director, DHL Global Forwarding Taiwan said: "Taiwan has been pushing different initiatives - including the free economic pilot zones plan which looks at key high-end, high value-added service industries such as logistics for innovation - to accelerate its integration into the regional economy. Taiwan's industries will need to rely on highly specialized global logistics services to meet the requirements of international trade. The combination of cost-efficient and faster access to markets offered by our multimodal service has created business opportunities for customers in many industries and enhanced their competitive edge. We know that this innovative solution will also appeal to Taiwanese exporters and importers as they capitalize on the growth opportunities."

Earlier this year, DHL added a third route to its China-Europe multimodal network - the westbound and eastbound Zhengzhou-Hamburg service which complements DHL Global Forwarding's two established routes. The first is a weekly scheduled block train service along the trans-Kazakh West Corridor rail service that originates from Chengdu, a hub for high tech goods, automotive and other industries, and the main distribution center for Western China, to Lodz in Poland. The second - also weekly - via the trans-Siberian North Corridor serves the manufacturing and commercial centers of Shanghai, Suzhou and surrounding areas and runs both westbound and eastbound services between Suzhou and Warsaw.

In 2014, DHL pioneered the first temperature-controlled China-Europe rail service, providing customers with temperature-sensitive products year-round access to this cost-effective shipping route regardless of the weather conditions.