Notebooks To Travel Revived Silk Road Rail Route From China To Europe
The old Silk Road trade route that dates back to the Middle Ages is staging a comeback of sorts with Acer projected to ship 40,000 notebooks by rail from Chongqing, China to Duisburg, Germany over the next two weeks, according to a report by Digitimes’ Aaron Lee and Joseph Tsai.
The reporters note that the shipment, which will traverse 11,000 km (6,835 miles) through China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland and Germany, will mark the first railroad crossing from China to Europe, opening up a new delivery logistics option for the notebook industry. Among the OEM notebook makers, they say that Quanta Computer (which is also a major Apple notebook subcontractor) has been the most aggressive player in expanding capacity in Chongqing, with 1.5-1.6 million of Quanta’s 4.5-5 million monthly notebook output are shipped from the company’s Chongqing plants.
It’s expected that the opening of the railroad link will encourage notebook makers to invest more heavily in western China, and allow notebook shipment times to be reduced significantly from 35-40 days to just two weeks, helping players to better manage their inventory. The cost of rail shipment is reportedly higher than sea shipment, but cheaper than shipping by air.
China now supplies some 90 percent of world notebook production according to Lee and Tsai, and mostly shipped to Western markets by sea or air, but it’s anticipated that more notebook makers will be following Acer down the Silk Road in future, with service frequency projected to ramp up from an initial round trip every 1-2 weeks to one trip per day the logistics system matures.
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http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20110921PD218.html