DHL Global Forwarding, the leading provider of air, sea and road freight services in Europe and Asia, introduced a second multi-modal overland service connecting Asia and Europe on Wednesday.

A train will depart every Friday from Chengdu to Europe, passing through Western China and Kazakhstan until it reaches DHL's intermodal hub in Małaszewicze, Poland.

The new weekly service comes as an addition to DHL's daily service, which departs from Shanghai and runs along the trans-Siberian North Corridor. It will reduce the overall Asia-Europe transport time by up to eight days, further cutting costs and CO2 emissions.

"DHL is the only forwarder offering regular, daily rail departures to and from China via our intermodal hub in Małaszewicze, Poland," said Kelvin Leung, DHL's Asia Pacific CEO.

"Our rail/road multimodal service has so far focused on high value, automotive and high tech goods, like electronics. We are now developing the solution further, to transfer our success to chemicals, and the parts and white goods sectors," said Leung, "In addition to China, we are also looking to expand this service to include key North Asian economies, such as Japan and Korea, in the near future."

Chengdu is one of the most important distribution centers in Western China. As a hub for electronics, machinery, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, metallurgy and processed foods, the city is expected to become one of China's economic powerhouses over the next decade.

"Chengdu's exports exceeded 23 billion euros ($30.21 billion) in 2012, up more than 30 percent from 2011," said Steve Huang, DHL's CEO in China, "and many of our own multinational customers in the electronics and automotive sectors are based there. Chengdu was therefore the choice origin/destination point for us after Shanghai."