00:00A new route between China and Europe is opening up.
00:04From Saturday, a weekly container service through the Arctic will begin,
00:08made possible by melting sea ice.
00:11Sea Legend tested the journey last year.
00:13Now it's ready for these regular trips,
00:16which offer a faster way to move goods from China to the West.
00:20It will also cut costs and reduce emissions.
00:24The Ice Silk Road will run along Russia's northern coast,
00:29linking Ningbo on China's east coast
00:32with Felix Stowe on the east coast of the United Kingdom.
00:35The test journey took just 20 days.
00:38That is around half the time it takes to ship goods
00:41between China and Europe via the Suez Canal.
00:45This route avoids the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandab Strait,
00:50all key shipping choke points affected by the war in Iran.
00:54For now, the service will run once a week for seven weeks
00:57until October the 3rd.
01:01Marco Forgioni is the Director General of the Chartered Institute of Export
01:05and International Trade.
01:06I asked him about the route's potential.
01:08In the coming years, this could be a really important sea route,
01:14not just for China, but actually for access between Europe and the east.
01:22So I think that as we're seeing climate change affecting the extent of sea ice
01:27through the route and investment in specialist shipping,
01:32actually this could become a major factor.
01:35Given the geopolitical uncertainty around certain waterways at the moment,
01:41how significant is the timing of this opening up?
01:45Well, it's part of a broader strategy of China particularly looking at diversification
01:51of its supply networks and supply chains.
01:54In addition to the work that's going in to opening up the Arctic,
02:00the northern sea route, the Polar Silk Road, as China is calling it,
02:05there's also a huge investment in what's known as the Middle Corridor,
02:08which is the multimodal route through the Caspian Sea.
02:12So it's clear that China sees access to its markets as being constrained currently by geopolitics
02:19and is investing heavily to open up alternative routes,
02:23avoiding those choke points in geopolitically sensitive areas.
02:27What is required in order to make sure that what is up to now being quite a dangerous icy route
02:33stays safe?
02:36So there are a number of areas.
02:37First is the investment in the icebreaking ships and specialist container ships that can handle sea ice.
02:44Then there also needs to be investment in search, rescue and additional support.
02:50There aren't very many ports at all available along that Arctic route.
02:55But certainly as we see demand improving, as we see the period of time that the Arctic route remains
03:04seriously ice-free expanding, we're now looking at nearly five months of ice-free access,
03:11the route will be used more regularly and we will start to see those investments paying off.
03:16Indeed, not just China and Russia are investing in their icebreaking shipping capabilities,
03:23but Finland is investing dramatically in its icebreaking capabilities.
03:27Of course, it's an environmentally sensitive area as well.
03:31What controls are in place to make sure that it stays protected?
03:36Well, the International Maritime Organization has set rules,
03:39particularly for transiting Iran through vulnerable areas, particularly through the Arctic.
03:46So it will be a case of what mitigations can be put in place,
03:50and then should the worst happen, that there are spillages or issues of contamination,
03:57that those can be dealt with effectively, which means investment in the infrastructure around the route.
04:02And that's something that Russia is already looking at,
04:06not just to open up the Arctic Sea route for container shipping and for global supply networks,
04:13but also because of its military access, particularly into the North Atlantic.
04:19It's more than it should be searched for the land.
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