The number of containers going to the CIS on board the container block train “Ostwind” (Eastwind) has increased every month this year. From January to April, the total freight volume transported via rail towards the CIS was 1,239 TEUs. At this time, there are three regular departures per week in this east-west-bound traffic. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday around 10:00 p.m., “Ostwind” starts from Großbeeren Terminal near Berlin to Malaszewicze. The cargo arrives there, via rail, from twelve container terminals in Germany, as well as from various other points in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. At the moment, approximately 70 % of the containers go to destinations in Central Asia – for the main part, to Kazakhstan, but there is a marked upwards trend for cargo shipped to Uzbekistan, too.

“Increasingly, customers are again considering transporting their containers to the CIS via rail – the level before the crisis has almost been attained again”, says Marlies Kaulich, Managing Director of the “Ostwind/Westwind” operator, InterRail Services IRS, Berlin. The growing interest in the product is owed most of all to the growing volumes of truck transports, the rise in prices for conventional full load services, the high safety standards with rail freight, and the increase in trade relations with the CIS.

Marlies Kaulich sees the upwards trend in container traffic towards the CIS also as proof that taking over the network operations of CIS traffic from ICF has been a success. At the beginning of the year, IRS also took over the CIS-traffic specialists from ICF in Basel, Switzerland, and in Moscow, as well as the ICF subsidiary Polcont in Warsaw. She adds: “Since all these employees had known each other for a long time already through working as cooperation partners, the cooperation within the new framework runs smoothly. And our customers, the forwarders, value the fact that there has not been much change as to their persons of contact for CIS transports. They also appreciate that the strictly neutral character of the services has been maintained.”

“Csardas”, the container system from Sopron on the Hungarian border to destinations in the CIS, is also part of today’s market oriented IRS transport and logistics system. “Csardas” has picked up speed again, too. Cargo can be pre-carried from Austria via rail, yet the majority of the containers are trucked from South Germany, Austria and other regions.

IRS had active support from its parent company, InterRail Holding AG, St. Gallen, in the smooth launching of the “new IRS” on the market and the speedy solution of all organizational and structural questions pertaining to the take-over of ICF’s CIS traffics. Says Hans Reinhard, CEO InterRail Holding: “Rail traffic with the CIS does have promising prospects, which is why we as the InterRail Group are very committed in this field in manifold forms, including Far East traffics.”

His vision for the “Ostwind/Westwind” traffic: daily, regular departures - and a direct linkage of the train system to the Far East rail services via the Trans-Siberian and the Trans-Kazakhstan Railroads.

The general lack in containers on the one hand, and high prices for customer owned containers on the other are at the moment hindering a bigger rise in container transports via rail towards the CIS. In the customers’ interest, IRS aims at securing further potential for growth by offering flexible solutions, by increasing the use of railway owned containers, and by cooperating more closely still with its CIS partners. Chances look good, also in view of the customs union Belarus-Russia-Kazakhstan. As Kaulich explains: “Since April first, to give an example, the guarding fees for the rail container transport from Brest to Russia or Kazakhstan have gone down considerably, as containers on this route are now treated as domestic. There are ameliorations also in other respects: Once a container to Kazakhstan has been properly dispatched from Brest, there should, as a rule, be no further inspection. Our hope is that it will soon be possible to actually get the import customs clearance process for the whole economic area done at the outer borders of the customs union. The necessary regulations already exist.”