Japan Material (JM) has been verifying its transportation between the specialty gas (SPG) warehouses using railway freight since the end of June.

The section to verify is from JM’s centralized warehouse at Yokkaichi, Mie Prefecture to a warehouse located in Kitakami, Iwate Prefecture. Between Yokkaichi-City Station (Mie Prefecture) and Mizusawa Station (Iwate Prefecture) on the line, transportation is made as JR cargo. Both stations are cargo terminals, where SPG cylinders are loaded on the 12ft refrigerated containers of Japan Oil Transportation (JOT) for railway transportation. The transportation between each station and business offices is made by trucks dealt with by Japan Transcity.

Each unit of JOT’s containers is capable to load 64 cylinders of 7m3 at the maximum and two units are handled as one lot. The refrigerated containers have been adopted to maintain a temperature at 40℃ or less. According to JM, it is possible to transport cylinders for 40 trucks by one-time railway transportation.

In the past the transportation was made by 4 to 5 round trips of trucks. By the introduction of the railway transportation, the company is going to upgrade the logistic efficiency. In addition, the CO2 emission can be reduced by about 55% during transportation comparing with before.
After the verification aimed until November this year, the company will make a combined operation with the current truck transportation. President Hisao Tanaka commented when interviewed, “Amid the imminent 2024 Logistics Issue, it will be the key point to increase transport measures to maintain a constant supply to end users. If we can establish a transport system by the verification at this time, we could foresee a solution to the problem of not only the driver procurement issue but also the logistic improvement subjects including more nationwide transportation.”