Formosa Plastics Group opens up cross-continental "New Silk Road"

This article was written by Susan Yu and published by the Taiwan Journal on February 24, 2006. It reports that Taiwan's plastics giant, the Formosa Plastics Group, recently announced that it would soon begin to transport its products via a new route that stretches from central Taiwan to Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The products will go through Lianyun Harbor in China's Jiangsu Province.

The Formosa Plastics Transport Corporation, a subsidiary of the Formosa Plastics Group, recently signed an agreement with Chinese authorities. The Formosa Plastics Group's products will be shipped from Mailiao Harbor in central Taiwan, where the company's sixth naphtha cracker project is located, to Lianyun Harbor. They will then be transported by train to Lanzhou City in central China's Gansu Province and onward, through the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, Kazakhstan, Russia and Europe to Amsterdam.

The length of this new route measures some 14,000 kilometers. The Formosa Plastics Group refers to it as the "New Silk Road". It is expected to cut shipping time by two weeks and reduce the shipping cost by 20 percent.

The Formosa Plastics Transport Corporation has also obtained permission from chinese authorities to set up a branch office in Ningbo in china's Zhejiang Province. It plans to establish another office in Xinjiang to service Central Asian markets.