The China-Europe Railway Express launches its 1,000th service in Xiamen in June. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The 1,000th freight train of the China-Europe Railway Express' Xiamen team departed from the coastal city in Fujian province on June 2, heading toward its final destination of Hamburg in Germany.

The train has been making regular trips to Europe since Xiamen joined the transcontinental route in August 2015.

Almost 80,000 containers of goods worth more than $3 billion have been shipped from or to Xiamen via the rail network, according to Xinhua News Agency.

Via the China-Europe Railway Express, Xiamen has launched routes to Europe, Asia and Russia, and expanded its connections with more than 30 cities in 12 countries.

The destinations include Poznan, Poland; Budapest, Hungary; Duisburg, Germany; Moscow, Russia; Almaty, Kazakhstan; and Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

The scheduled train services of the China-Europe Railway Express offer a faster and more convenient logistics channel for trade with Russia, China News Service quoted Yu Jiangang, general manager of international business of a Xiamen-based trade company, as saying.

Compared with shipping by sea, the rail service can help to shorten the travel time by nearly two weeks, he added. 

Yu's company exports nearly 1,000 containers of light industrial products, such as clothes, shoes and accessories, to Russia annually.

"The China-Europe Railway Express service enables our products to hit the shelves faster so we can gain the upper hand in the market, accelerate our capital turnover and reduce our financial costs," Yu said.

The rail service is popular with businesspeople because of its safety, large shipment volume, low freight costs and being less affected by the weather, industrial insiders said. For instance, it takes 16 days for such a train to carry goods from Xiamen to Hamburg, roughly two-thirds less than the travel time via sea transport.

As a crucial regional transport hub, Xiamen has a premium international port opening container routes to major shipping destinations especially in Southeast Asia, as well as China's Taiwan.

Combining with the city's ocean routes, the China- Europe Railway Express services are more appealing to exporters from neighboring countries, including Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, Indonesia and India, as well as China's Taiwan and Hong Kong, for transit trade.

They ship their goods by sea to Xiamen, and then via the China-Europe Railway Express service, to their overseas destinations. In this way, travel time will be reduced to less than 20 days, which would otherwise take 30-40 days.

Centering on the rail service, Xiamen is gearing up to develop multimodal transport businesses.

In addition, the China-Europe Railway Express has launched the "less than a container load" shipping model, where many small shipments to different consignees are consolidated in one container in Xiamen. The city has increased cooperation in intercity express rail services with other cities, including Xi'an in Shaanxi province and Chongqing.