IRU NELTI...creating new business opportunities

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NELTI Media Partner

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IRU President’s greetings 5

IRU Secretary General’s greetings 5

Political Impetus to reopen the Silk Road 6

IRU’s New Eurasian Land Transport Initiative 8

Euro-Asian trade links in 2009:Prospects, Facts & Figures 10

EU Transport Operators for IRU NELTI 14

IRU NELTI Northern Route 26

IRU NELTI Central Route 28

IRU NELTI Southern Route 30

Monitoring: Preliminary Results of IRU NELTI 32

IRU NELTI Online 34

IRU NELTI: Join us! 36

See you in Almaty 38

Table of contents

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IRU’s New Eurasian Land Transport Initiative (NELTI) bridging Asia and Europe aims at:

l Interconnecting businesses along IRU NELTI routesl Creating a land bridge on the Eurasian continentl Driving prosperity and peace

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Martin MARMy, IRU Secretary General

“This is just the beginning! The world will never be the same. These trucks will from now on not only carry trade, but also peace. Because trade is where trucks are, and since trade improves the general standards of living, people will live better where trucks circulate and will no longer go to war. My wish is that these trucks symbolise peace for ev-erybody!”

Janusz LAcNy, IRU President

“Currently, for dogmatic reasons, less than 1% of trade between European and Asian countries is car-ried through Central Asian countries, which were in earlier days at the heart of world trade. This is due to the fact that it is not widely known that only road transport, with its unique door-to-door, high-quality service, can interconnect all the businesses and re-gions from the Far East to Europe. The project of revitalising the Great Silk Road has just taken a giant leap forward through the IRU NELTI project.”

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Political impetus to reopen the Silk RoadJoint ministerial declarations were adopted at the IRU’s Euro-Asian Road Transport Conferences in Beijing, 2005 and War-saw, 2007, as well as at the IRU 60th Anniversary Congress in Istanbul, 2008, in full support of the IRU’s project to reopen the Silk Road through the New Eurasian Land Transport Initiative.

In these declarations, Transport Ministers from some 30 Asian and European countries agreed that “the economic and trade development in Asia and Europe would be greatly en-hanced by a strengthened cooperation in facilitating road transport”, and recognised the “need to provide landlocked countries with an access to international road transport amenities to foster their economic and trade growth.”

In this context, Ministers reasserted their strong commitment to implement the United Nations multilateral trade and road trans-port facilitation instruments, to create favourable cross-border and transit conditions by removing non-physical barriers with a view to promoting the development of road transport between Asia and Europe.

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“The spectacular development of Asian econo-mies is bringing unprecedented changes in the transport links between Europe and Asia. They imply an increased trade and congestion on traditional routes. New routes are therefore cre-ated with new actors and new organisational methods. One of the positive features of theses changes is that a broad number of countries are now working together through regional or-ganisations such as BSEC or TRACECA to de-velop adequate inland transport infrastructure and remove regulatory barriers that prevent the development of efficient surface transport ser-vices.”

Jack ShoRT, Secretary General, International Transport Forum, ITF

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IRU’s New Eurasian Land Transport InitiativeNELTI is an essential next step in the IRU strate-gy of interconnecting businesses in Asia and Eu-rope all along the Eurasian landmass to all major world markets as well as increasing public and business awareness of the huge opportunities created by this land bridge. With the support of international organisations and national Govern-ments, several independent transport operators started commercial deliveries of industrial and consumer goods, from Central Asia and West-ern China to Europe and Turkey, in September 2008 through IRU’s NELTI.

IRU NELTI in progress 16 September 2008: NELTI is launched in Tashkent, Uzbekistan in the framework of an international confer-ence on Eurasian road transport haulage.

September 2008 to April 2009: Commercial deliveries of goods and monitoring on NELTI’s routes are con-ducted, with the valuable assistance of NELTI’s national coordinating centres.

April-May 2009: NEA finalises the monitored results and prepare NELTI’s “road map”.

June 11-12, 2009: NELTI outcomes are presented in Almaty, Kazakhstan, at the 5th IRU Euro-Asian Road Transport Conference.

IRU NELTI gains support of: l Presidents of GUAM countries meeting in Batumi

l International Conference on road transport development in Central Asian countries in Tashkent

l 2nd Belarus Transport Congress in Minsk

l 1st Silk Road Businessmen Forum in Trabzon

l 2008 China Logistics Conference in Shanghai

l GUAM Regional meeting in Baku

l International Conference on road transport develop- ment in times of economic crisis in Warsaw

9NELTI routes

Northern Route

central Route

Southern Route

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1 0 Euro-Asian trade links in 2009: Prospects, Facts and Figures

Yang JIEchI, Foreign Minister, Peoples Republic of china

“China-EU relations are full of hope as our two sides share a lot of common interests. The bilateral ties will surely forge ahead.”

Juan MIRANdA, director General central west Asia, Asian development Bank

“Despite the current financial crisis, roadfreight transport is forecast to grow by about 10% a year, and the number of vehicles by 5%. The road should be a big boost to the economy of the Asian region: ‘a new Silk Road’.”1

Lee PERkINS, china Market Analyst, Transport Intelligence

“The West of China has enormous untapped potential. 60% of the Chinese population live in the interior but only produce 30% of GNP. This means that there are still un-known possibilities there.”2

Prospects…

1 The Economist, November 20082 Lloyd’s Special Report on Asia, June 2008

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Facts…The Silk Road is not one single route but rather a network of multiple land transport axes, serving all businesses in previ-ously landlocked countries, hence irrigating their economies and interconnecting them to the world’s major markets.

The UNEScAP is currently developing the Asian Highway network which is not only meant to achieve better connectivity between all Asian countries and open up remote areas, but also to improve the trade route from Asia to Europe through Russia.

The EU and china agreed to take positive steps to enhance coordination on macro-economic policies in order to over-come the financial crisis and to promote the liberalisation of trade and investment. Both sides emphasised that an open, free and fair trade and investment environment and the cre-ation of new business opportunities are important means to tackle the current financial and economic crises.

UNESCAP-IRUAsian HighwayTruck Caravan

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…and FiguresChina is Europe’s fastest growing export market. Europe exported € 72 billion worth of goods to China in 2007 and this figure increased by about 12% over the first 9 months of 2008 compared to the same pe-riod in 2007. Exports from the EU to China grew by 75% between 2003 and 2007. Op-portunities for road transport thus exist in both directions!

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Chinese exports to EU and North America in 2007, in %3

Europe’s imports from China have grown by around 21% per year for the last five years. In 2007, the EU imported €232 billion of goods from China. China today is Europe’s biggest source of manufactured imports, whereas China and Europe traded almost nothing two decades ago.1 European Commission, January 2009 2International Trade Statistics 2008, World Trade Organisation, 20083Ibid

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an attractive place to conduct business from and do business with.

Yet, almost in the same breath they will argue about the harm that transport of goods by road is creating to society and the environment; and they will seek to punish those who use it.

When will it be realised that low cost, efficient and flexible road freight transport and logistics is what makes Europe competitive and a place from which to source goods, and keep prices for business and consumers down?

Manufacturing and international trade would become impossible to sustain without road freight logistics: whether we like it or not, it is the most flexible, ver-satile, economic, productive and competitive form of

Dick van den BRoEk hUMPhREIJ, chairman, European Shippers’ council

“On numerous occasions, leading officials within the European Commission have referred to the goals and ob-jectives of the Lisbon agenda, the need to make Europe’s economy competitive and

transport for the vast majority of industry’s needs. Rail, shipping (including by inland waterways) and air freight play their part – a vital role in the movement of freight – but they are simply not always viable or sufficiently competitive to be able to take over from road freight. Whether intra-European, or intra-Asian, road freight has to be used, there is often, simply, no other viable choice for delivering a high quality door-to-door freight transport service.

Politicians need to understand and accept this fact and stop trying to penalise the industry for using road freight services with higher charges, tolls, and taxes, and a failure to invest in the infrastructure re-quired. Our economy is, as a result, suffering.

European international road transport services to and from third countries is at a competitive disadvantage and European industry is steadily moving out, harming the European economy and society.

With strong support for the IRU’s NELTI project, the European Commission could significantly help to reverse this negative trend.”

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“It is fashionable for roads and road haul-age to be considered outdated and not sustainable. We believe the opposite. New technologies are coming which will extend road haulage viability. It would be wrong to ignore the tremendous flexibility, cus-tomer satisfaction and effectiveness that this mode offers and stupid not to extend its potential into the heartland of Asia. The World development Goals are depen-dent on road haulage which should thus be facilitated because it is regu-lated as no other mode. The NELTI project is one of the obvious ways of achieving these goals. The 2000-year -old Chinese saying is as valid now as it was then: ‘If you want wealth, build a road’.”

roger kING, chief Executive, Road haulage Association (RhA), Uk

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“In this globalised world, the need for rapid and flexible mobility, hence for road transport, has never been greater. Globalisation of trade does not necessarily mean transport over long dis-tances but, above all, the possibility to intercon-nect all businesses all along any route. Asia’s soaring economic growth, competitive work force and rapidly expanding consumer base, where two thirds of the world’s population live, work and want to improve their living stan-dards, make it the region with the greatest business opportunities. This is the main reason why our road transport company is looking east for future growth by establish-ing efficient partnerships with our counterparts operating on the Eurasian landmass!”

DiDier MIchEL, Administrateur- délégué, Michel Logistics, Belgium

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“Asia today, and most specifically China, has become the world’s factory. Massive flows of manufactured goods are shipped to Europe. It is up to us, European road transport operators, to take advantage of these new developments by setting up alter-native, flexible, reliable and possibly co-modal logistics solutions, together with our Eastern partners. This is exact-ly what the IRU’s New Land Transport Initiative is offering to us: the possibility to extend the scope of our road transport activities by strengthening cooperation with our Eastern partners.”

antonio MoUSINho, General director, TAS Portugal SA, Portugal

“Taking into consideration the present situation of road hauliers looking for new transport markets, we salute the IRU’s NELTI project for turning our attention to the new and exciting large road transport vol-umes which exist in Asia, where population, pro-duction, trade and transport figures can no lon-ger be ignored by road transport operators in the EU! However, to ensure the best use of our trucks and have better transport, while driving the intercon-nection of businesses in this region through enhanced development of intra and interregional trade, it would be most beneficial not only to our industry but for gov-ernments to implement the ECMT quota system all the way to China! This should become a top priority of the International Transport Forum, to allow the step-by-step development of these new trade and road trans-port markets.”

raDu dINEScU, Secretary General, National Union of Road hauliers from Romania (UNTRR), Romania

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“In this time of economic crisis every true entrepreneur is obliged to look for new busi-ness opportunities if he wants to stay in the game. Like lotteries, you can’t win unless you play. Every road transport operator today has the choice of either joining those who are already benefitting from the huge business opportunities being created by the IRU’s NELTI, which will only increase in the years to come, as the landlocked countries of Central Asia start joining the global economy, thanks to road transport, or staying at home alone and counting his losses!”

JarosLaw JAkoNIUk, cEo, Jakontrans, Poland

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“Reopening the Silk Road always conjures up ideas about the adventures and travels of Marco Polo. He, however, paved the way to maritime trade be-tween Europe and the Far East, which led to the eventual concentration of trade in only a few ports with two major consequences: 1) the desertifica-tion of trade in the hinterlands, and 2) leaving land-locked countries completely out of today’s global trade patterns. The reopening of the Silk Road, through the IRU’s NELTI project, rightly aims at bringing landlocked countries that suffered from the exploits of Marco Polo back into the global economy, because no country is land-locked for road transport! Italian and EU fleet op-erators endowed with a true entrepreneurial spirit should be keen to now join this IRU NELTI project!”

carLotta cAPoNI, director of Marketing, Autotransporti, Italy

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Pere PAdRoSA, cEo, Padrosa Transport, Spain

“Maritime transport accounts for almost the totality of transport between Asia and Europe yet it offers a low quality of service, very long delivery deadlines, significant storage expenses and in-creasing infrastructural constraints, despite recent investment efforts.

Road transport between Asia and Europe can complement maritime transport by providing high- quality services, shorter delivery deadlines and a large reduction of storage costs.

In producing countries, maritime transport leads to the concentration of industrial and economic activity only in the areas directly

connected to big harbours, contributing to important territorial imbalances. Since road transport services are less focussed on territory, they can help to move production activities to inland areas, closer to the main consumer centres of Western Europe. This will contribute to territorial balance and avoid population move-ments which are currently one of the main social problems.

In importing countries, since road transport works in a decentralised way, it will lead to less concen-tration of transport and logistics in the big har-bours and their areas of influence, contributing to decreasing infrastructure congestion in the areas directly linked to harbours.”

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“It is about time that the double standard stops! Governments continue to point a very critical finger at the road transport industry for its CO2 emissions, despite its outstanding achievements in reducing toxic emissions by up to 98%! So the concept of a truck potentially going over longer distances, even if truck travel over 1000 km represents less than 1% of average trip distances, is frowned upon by environmentalists and politicians.

Yet, Ministers of Transport gathering to discuss the Challenge of Climate Change at the ITF Conference in Leipzig last year recognised, based on Boe-ing’s projections, that passenger air travel is expected to more than double from 2005 to 2025, while Airbus industries projected that air freight cargo will triple during the same period.

Given that airplanes pollute 18 times more co2 than commercial road transport vehicles, we see that governments’ policy focus against road transport is completely skewed, especially since only road trans-port can interconnect every business, in every region, to every major world market.”

PhiLiPPe dEGRAEF, director, Fédération Royale Belge des Transporteurs (FEBETRA), Belgium

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“Globalisation is here to stay – production will continue to flourish where the most com-petitive conditions exist. Transport patterns must thus adapt to these changes in order to meet future demand. We as European road transport operators are naturally interested in participating in the creation of new trade routes, as is being done through IRU’s New Land Transport Initia-tive for moving goods door-to-door from the producing to the consuming regions – this is what drives road transport.”

Martin SPRyNAR, Secretary General, cESMAd Bohemia, czech Republic

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IRU NELTI Northern Route The northern route’s approximate length is 6,500 km (from Uz-bekistan via Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, to the EU). Categories of freight transported include textiles, agricultural products, indus-trial equipment, food and pharmaceuticals.

Companies operating on IRU NELTI Northern route: AtrimLogistics (Russia)

Janstrong (Belarus)

Bunyod (Uzbekistan)

Azatika (kyrgyzstan)

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“We are engaged in the IRU’s NELTI proj-ect with freight deliveries along the Northern and Southern routes. We therefore can com-pare these two routes. deliveries along the Southern Route are simple for us, as there are fewer formalities. The National coor-dinating centres set up within the NELTI Project have proved highly useful. We co-operated with them in the course of the opera-tions, and they have done a good job helping the carriers in difficult situations. If we consider regular deliveries along the NELTI routes, why shouldn’t we set up Coordinating Centres for the routes on a permanent basis?”

shavkatboY yUSUPov, director, Bunyod, Uzbekistan “I would like to express my gratitude to the

IRU for the NELTI Project. International road transport carriers now see that their work is not just transportation, it is a matter of strategic and national impor-tance. our problems must thus be tack-led by governments! Today we are faced with imperfect regulatory procedures in in-ternational haulage and burdened with ex-cessive formalities. The NELTI Project is our chance to reach out to decision-makers. We are grateful to the IRU for providing us with this chance. We are sure that our joint efforts in the NELTI project will serve as an impetus to attracting more attention to hauliers’ prob-lems in all countries participating in NELTI.”

DMitrY MIkhAILov, deputy director, AtrimLogistics, Russia

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IRU NELTI Central Route The route’s approximate length is 5,100 km (from Central China via Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia to the EU). Freight transported notably includes automotive compo-nents and cotton.

Companies operating on IRU NELTI Central route: central Asia Trans (Uzbekistan)

Bk Intrans (Uzbekistan)

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“Our road transport companies and, for that matter, all road transport and re-lated industries follow with great interest the development of the IRU’s NELTI Project, and are looking forward to its practical results. It is already clear that the practical implementation of this initiative, aimed at the develop-ment of the Great Silk Road, and especially the demonstration of road transport caravans launched in Tashkent on 16 September 2008, have shown that freight carriage by road transport from china to Europe and back are not only possible, but, moreover, are in great demand.

Practical measures are already being taken to improve transit conditions, with new regulatory documents being prepared. It is obvious that certain organisa-tional measures have to be taken at the border checkpoints. I should add that it would be wrong to interrupt the project. The mechanism of pan-Euro-Asian haulage, now launched through IRU NELTI, must operate further as a link be-tween all nations and economies.”

kakhraMon SydIkNAzARov, President, Associations of Road Transport carriers (AIRcU), Uzbekistan

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IRU NELTI Southern Route The route’s approximate length is 4,000 km (from Kyrgyzstan via Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran to Turkey). Freight transported in-cludes seasonal export goods such as capers and walnuts, as well as leather, raw materials, dried fruit, consumer goods, spare parts for cars and plastics for window frames.

Companies operating on IRU NELTI Southern route:

karadeniz (Turkey)

oshmejtrans (kyrgyzstan)

Bunyod (Uzbekistan)

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“Participation in the international NELTI Project is an important development for my company. We presented the project at the 1st Forum of the Great Silk Road Businesses in Trabzon in 2008, where we saw the great interest raised by IRU’s NELTI amongst the business commu-nity. our participation in the project proved useful to our company, too. For one thing, the logbooks filled out by the drivers prompted us to analyse our own business in a different way. I confirm once again that haulage along the Silk Road is no longer just an aspiration, it is a reality. But a great deal still needs to be done to make the operations more simple and easy.”

hYsein SANdIkchI, director, karadeniz, Turkey “Not only was our company one of the first to support the

IRU’s NELTI Project, but through our example, we prompted yet another Kyrgyz transport company to take part in the project. They view us today as trailblazers because we par-ticipate in the project under the auspices of the IRU. We understand that with the facts and figures that we gather from our vehicles en route we contribute to the overall stock of information resulting from the project. We sense that we are contributing to the improvement of the conditions of transit traffic.

It is important to say that, through NELTI, we acquired new possibilities and generated new ideas which we would like to implement with concrete actions. our business contacts extended, our relations with customs services in the region and with the kyrgyz Ministry of Transport improved.

We stand ready to participate in the implementation of new ideas aimed at improving road transport operations.”

MaksuD ABdUMUMINov, director, oshmezhtrans, kyrgyzstan

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Monitoring – Preliminary Results The IRU NELTI operations have been monitored in two phases, at the be-ginning and the end of the six-month period, using internationally recog-nised methods of monitoring and registering road conditions, wait-ing times at border-crossing points, quality of road infrastructure, admin-istrative barriers etc. In the period be-tween initial and final monitoring, driv-ers filled in their own logbooks, which provided additional information on the situation en route. Monitored data will be analysed by NEA – Dutch Trans-port Research Institute and presented on 11-12 June 2009 at the 5th IRU Euro-Asian Road Transport con-ference in Almaty, kazakhstan.

Preliminary outcome of the IRU’s NELTI project*

*(until February, 2009)

1. Time spent en route by all vehicles 3,011 days

2. Distance covered 1,094,000 km

3. Amount of official levies paid 156,000 USd

4. Sum of unjustified levies paid 64,000 USd

5. Number of stops en route 4,279

6. Number of state border crossings 714

7. Length of downtime en route 1,197 days

8. Cargo carried 3,270 tonnes

20 vehicles participated in NELTI; by the end of February, approximately 100 round trips were realised.

On average, each vehicle involved in NELTI covered about 50,000 km and made about 5 round trips.

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www. i ru-nel t i .org

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IRU NELTI OnlineThe IRU launched a new web site, www.iru-nelti.org, in order to consolidate the IRU’s efforts to revitalise the Silk Road and establish Eurasian road transport linkages, but also to provide information support for road transport operators involved in goods transportation from the Asia-Pacific region to Europe and from the EU to Asia, as well as to cover the implementa-tion of the NELTI project.

The site contains various information on the project, including data on trips provided by the companies, reports on admin-istrative barriers they face, amounts of taxes as well as operational and legal problems arising en route.

The significant number of visitors from various origins, including major Western markets, searching the dedicated NELTI website, provides further evidence of the high level of interest raised by the IRU’s New Eurasian Land Transport Initiative.

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Road transport and forwarding companies – Finding new business partners, expanding volumes and increasing scope of operations;

Manufacturing companies – Saving time when delivering goods to customers, increasing competitive capacity, enhancing your production efficiency;

companies supplying complementary services – Develop-ing activities and profitability through increased volume and geo-graphical coverage of services provided (insurance, technical maintenance, repairs and fuel stations, motels, public utilities, etc.);

Transit countries – Interconnecting businesses to all major mar-kets, thus creating jobs, boosting GDP growth and increasing prosperity.

United Nations and other international organisations - Fur-thering the achievements of the UN Millennium Development Goals, laying an efficient alternative route for goods delivering between Europe and Asia and stimulating development of land- locked countries as per the Almaty Programme of Action.

IRU NELTI creates new business opportunities for everyone!

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“The Reopening of the Silk Road:From vision to Reality”

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Photo credit page 36 / 37: Globetrucker 2009 www.globetrucker.com / Ferdy De Martin 2009 www.toprun.ch

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