Vietnam Railways launches refrigerated container service

According to the Vietnam Railways, it, in conjunction with the Saigon Newport Corporation, puts trains with refrigerated containers in the Song Than – Binh Thuan – Lao Cai route into operation. The journey time of the trains, which have 19 containers each, is roughly 56 hours. Firstly, it plans to run two pairs of trains a week.
The trains will mainly transport fresh goods such as fruits and seafood from the South to the North. At the return trip, it will transport cargos such as fertilizers, equipment and machinery.
The new service in the Song Than – Binh Thuan – Lao Cai route has been put into operation after it had been piloted successfully in the shorter route of Song Than – Binh Thuan – Yen Vien (Hanoi).

A train with 19 refrigerated containers of Vietnam Railways.

With the launching of the new service, freights for Vietnamese export goods to China is estimated to reduce by roughly 20 percent compared with road transport.
“The new service will help the exports of Vietnamese goods to China become more competitive,” Nguyen Thanh Son, director of the ICD Tan Cang – Song Than Co under the Saigon Newport Corporation said.  
According to the World Bank’s ranking, Vietnam is 64th out of 160 countries in the world and 4th in ASEAN after Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand in logistics development. With an average growth rate of 16 to 20 per cent a year, logistics has been one of the service sectors with stable development in Vietnam over the past few years.
Logistics costs in Vietnam are estimated to equal to roughly 25 percent of GDP yearly, higher than the proportion of 19 percent in Thailand, 18 percent in China, 13 percent in Malaysia and even three times higher than that in Singapore or the US.
Tran Dinh Thien, director of the Vietnam Economics Institute, said that logistics costs are a burden for Vietnamese firms as it accounts for more than two third of total good value, compared with only a half in other countries.
Data from the Vietnam Chamber of Commercial and Industry also showed that the freight to transport a cargo container from Hai Phong to Hanoi (roughly 100 kilometers) is three times higher than that from China or Republic of Korea to Vietnam.
Vietnam Railways said that it will also build warehouses and logistics facilities along the North-South route to be able to further cut the logistics costs by roughly 20 per cent.