Your next capital equipment project in EMEA should not wait for the sea lanes in the Middle East to settle.
At Facteon, we have been working on a different answer for our EMEA customers: go overland.
Two years on, most Asia–Europe container traffic is still sailing the long way around Africa. Ten to fourteen extra days per voyage. Rates 25–40% above pre-crisis levels. Schedule reliability under 60%.
If you ship consumer goods, that is an inventory headache. If you are waiting on a production line, it is a project risk, idle installation teams, commissioning windows pushed into peak season, payback on a multi-million-euro investment starting weeks late.
At Facteon, we have been working on a different answer for our EMEA customers: go overland.
Rail has grown up
The China–Europe Railway Express is no longer a novelty. In Q1 2026 it ran over 5,400 trains carrying around 546,000 TEU, up 29% year on year, connecting more than a hundred Chinese cities with over two hundred European destinations. Typical transit is 13–25 days, and the new fixed-timetable services reach Central Europe in as little as 11 days. Faster than a Cape-routed vessel by weeks; a fraction of the cost of air freight.
And it is not one route. Multiple corridors, including the trans-Caspian Middle Corridor via Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea and Türkiye, mean routing can be matched to each customer's compliance policy as well as their calendar. Just this April, a new Middle Corridor service launched with transit of around 18 days, its first train loaded for Europe via Turkish ports, the same corridor reaches the Middle East and North Africa overland.
Why this matters for our customers
Facteon's project delivery model for the EMEA region combines advanced engineering design in Auckland, New Zealand with manufacturing at our own plant in China, sited in one of the country's established rail-to-Europe hub regions, with regular China–Europe Railway Express departures from a nearby multimodal terminal.
So for a European or Middle Eastern manufacturer, the chain looks like this: your line is built and factory-acceptance-tested at our China plant, containerised on site, and loaded to a scheduled rail service, arriving in installation order, on a date you can plan a commissioning team around. Sea freight when the economics favour it; rail when the calendar demands it.
The question to ask in 2026:
Delivery certainty now deserves the same scrutiny as machine specification and price. Whoever you are talking to about your next production machinery investment, ask them one question: what is your plan B when the sea route slips, and what does it cost to activate?
Reinaldo Silva
Board Director & Global GM of Sales
Reinaldo is our Global GM of Sales, and Board Director. He is responsible for Facteon's international growth, global sales operations and customer experience across our markets in Australasia, North America, Latin America and EMEA.
His experience leading a number of different functions at Facteon over the past 8 years has provided him with a deep understanding of the ever-changing demands from the markets and customers that our business serves, and what it takes to deliver great value and outcomes to our customers and partners.
