NIPPON EXPRESS: DRIVING FORWARD AUTOMOTIVE LOGISTICS Vol.2

Nobember 4,2020

― Trains and ships for car parts

One example is how the company has spread the combination of localised “milk runs” (collecting mixed loads from different suppliers) with long-distance just-in-time railway transport, says Nagai. The approach perfected in Japan is now being adopted overseas in growing automotive markets such as China, Malaysia, and India.
Equally significant, by integrating long-distance rail transport into logistics solutions, the automotive industry’s ecological footprint has been significantly reduced. Over the same distance, transporting cargo by railways (in countries like Japan with electrified railway systems) generates only an eighth of CO2 emissions compared to trucks.

Overseas, Nippon Express offers cross-border railway services delivering automotive parts. After two years of multiple trial runs, the company is now offering a logistics service over approximately 10,000 km of railways traversing the Eurasian continent between various stations in Europe and China. Demand is set to grow on this Eurasian route with a recent spate of major investments in EV production in China by Western and Japanese automakers.
“We expect that mega-suppliers in Europe and component and materials makers in Japan will increasingly need to ship items for EVs across continents,” says Nagai. “Nippon Express has established the Eurasian railway service as a new transportation mode cheaper than air freight and faster than ocean freight and hopes many automotive sector customers will take advantage of it.”

In addition to its strength in rail, Nippon Express has also been a forerunner in providing seamless logistics using RORO ships (cargo ships designed to carry on wheeled cargo). Since trucks can directly roll-on and roll-off these ferries, cargo no longer needs to be taken off from trucks, repackaged for the ship journey, and reloaded onto trucks on arrival – steps which take time and waste packing material. Using RORO in intermodal transport, such as on its routes between South Korea and Japan, therefore significantly cuts costs together with the ecological impact of delivering automotive parts across continents.