The No 81972 "Hedehao" sea-rail intermodal cross-border e-commerce special train departs Yiwu West Railway Station in Jinhua, Zhejiang province, on Oct 18. [Photo/Tide News]

The No 81972 "Hedehao" sea-rail intermodal cross-border e-commerce special train departed from Yiwu West Railway Station in Jinhua, Zhejiang province, on Oct 18, carrying 90 TEUs of goods bound for Ningbo-Zhoushan Port.

The goods will be exported to cities including Los Angeles in the United States via a new fast multimodal transportation channel that seamlessly connects the train with the shipping company's express line.

Yiwu, a county-level city in Jinhua, has experienced a surge in digital trade, with over 260,000 cross-border e-commerce entities. It generated a transaction volume of 106.52 billion yuan ($14.95 billion) in cross-border e-commerce from January to September, a 16.52 percent increase year-on-year.

The demand for overseas expansion by Yiwu's cross-border e-commerce enterprises is rapidly growing. With over 1,000 cross-border logistics companies in Yiwu, many leading enterprises serve as logistics providers for platforms like Amazon and Alibaba.com.

Hede Shipping is the first Chinese company to offer a direct route to the US West Coast. During the launching ceremony, the Yiwu Cross-border Logistics Association signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Hede Shipping, aiming to provide better route choices to reduce logistics costs for cross-border logistics companies.

In the first three quarters of this year, 71,000 TEUs were shipped via sea-rail intermodal transportation, an 11.06 percent increase year-on-year.

Editor: Xu Zhitian