A Yiwu-Xinjiang-Europe freight train runs from the Yiwu Railway Station on Jan 1. [Photo/zjol.com.cn]

A Yiwu-Xinjiang-Europe freight train loaded with 100 twenty-foot equivalent units of various goods left Yiwu Railway Station on Jan 1 for Central Asia.

It was the first train to depart from the Yiwu platform of the China-Europe freight train in 2023.

A total of seven trains were launched from the Yiwu platform that day, with 730 TEUs of goods shipped, a year-on-year increase of 53.4 percent. Among them, five outbound trains with 500 TEUs were shipped, an increase of 66.7 year-on-year.

Yiwu has been working to promote information exchanges among customs, railways, platforms, and enterprises in order to provide complete online services for Yiwu-Xinjiang-Europe freight train trips.

In 2022, the Yiwu platform of the China-Europe freight train operated a total of 1,569 trains carrying over 129,000 TEUs of goods, an increase of 22.8 percent year-on-year. The Yiwu platform operated over four trains per day in 2022.

Since the launch of the train in 2013, a total of 4,974 trains carrying over 410,000 TEUs of goods have operated out of Yiwu.

With 18 routes, the trains now travel to 101 overseas stations in over 50 countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative, including France, Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, Russia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, and five Central Asian countries.