The virus changed the international transport routes

Less maritime traffics, new shipping routes, more trains. In a nutshell, that is how Covid-19 affected European and Italian logistics towards the Far East, especially in the first half of 2020.

Two main effects substantially emerge from the Covid-19 impact: the revaluation of the nineteenth-century main sea route through the Suez Canal, preferring to circumnavigate Africa, and the quantitative increase in long-distance trains between Europe and Asia. Replacing the passage through the Suez Canal with the route along the Cape of Good Hope was mainly due to the longer time available to ship goods - as a consequence of reduced free warehouses and suffering supply chains - and lower cost of fuel, which made an extra week of transit time cheaper than the same costs to sail through the Suez Canal.

That was an unexpected event, bound to terminate, experts say. Long-distance trains, on the other hand, are not destined to be a "flash in the pan". There has been a huge increase of trains between Europe and Asia from March to May, particularly between Italy and China. An increase due to the impossibility of using air carriers, the reduction of the human presence in transport operations during the lockdown, faster goods passage at the borders by train than by ship.

The result is long-lasting: trains between the industrial zones of Northern Italy and China, between Germany and China or Poland and China will be further developed and consolidated in the medium term, thanks to the planned investments in the railway sector along the Belt and Road Initiative and from the new rail links in Eastern Russia.