Drivers of railway container transports between China and Finland

Abstract

On the China–Europe route, the sea used to dominate entirely continental transports, but in the last decade the railways started to gain some ground. However, it took number of years that railway volumes grew as significant, and finally coronavirus era (2020–2021) promoted much higher usage. This was the case not only on the main route Poland–China, but also on the more northern and lower-volume routes, such as Finland–China. This research uses regression analysis of the latter route to reveal factors that have an effect on rail container volumes. It is shown that Baltic Dry Index (BDI) and coronavirus related variables have influenced most container volumes on the Finland–China route. Oil price development has also played some sort of role. Interestingly, sea port handling of Finland does not play any significance in the model, nor does foreign trade between countries. Findings could be explained with the low starting ground of service, and dominance of sea transportation.